


Ures Tok'kad

by Different_frequency, EarlGreyed



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Clones, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 46,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Different_frequency/pseuds/Different_frequency, https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarlGreyed/pseuds/EarlGreyed
Summary: We all know the story.  Good defeats evil, the weak outwit the strong, and the lone gunman vanquishes the demon of his past to protect his child and his people.  But what if the story isn’t as simple as we have been led to believe? When an Empire shatters, who picks up the pieces and forges them into something new?
Comments: 25
Kudos: 66





	1. Not a Rescue Mission

**Author's Note:**

> A thanks to Different Frequency for helping to edit this work.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hostages Rescued, an Informant captured

The enhanced image showed four mercenaries on the platform outside the base. Likely some old Republic base leftover from the Clone Wars, it had been lost during the transition to the Empire and is now just another ruin filled with the least reputable of the galaxy’s gunslingers. The helmeted individual watched from an overhang about 200 meters from the platform. Normally, he wouldn’t have been able to get this close, but the guards were trying to make up with numbers what they clearly lacked in competence.

As he watched, another of his little squad was climbing up the side. His HUD picked out two other figures now close enough to be within striking range of the guards. Shifting position, the man moved to look through the scope of his rifle. It was an older model, manufactured just after the Clone Wars, but he needed something accurate and in the millions of blasters produced by the Empire, accuracy had never been a priority.

“Grey Squad, in position?” The voice of the mission commander, eager for his first mission as the leader, sounded in his ear.

“Grey Five in position.”

“Grey Four in position.”

“Grey Three Ready.”

He toggled his comms, “Grey Two in position.”

After a short pause the commander replied, “Understood. Grey Squad, execute.”

He pulled the trigger. One of the four mercenaries went down as the other three members of his squad either dropped in or elevated themselves onto the platform. Two of the other guards went down cleanly but one was hit in the shoulder and went down behind some crates. Grey Two didn’t have a clear line of sight, and it took a precious few seconds for one of the three on the platform to end the last straggler’s life.

“Bad news, looks like he triggered an alarm. We are going to have company soon,” Three reported, her voice the mixture of tense and alert that’s only heard in the midst of a mission.

“Understood. Two, we are moving to the platform. Secure the door before they seal-”

One’s voice was cut off by the blast door slamming shut.

“Shit. Five get that door open. Everyone else, cover him.”

The affirmatives sounded through his helm as Two looked to One, who nodded before they both engaged their jump-packs and made the short flight over to the platform. Five was already there working on the panel with Three and Four providing cover. After a moment, Five gave a quick shout of triumph as the doors slid open.

The wall of blaster fire that came from the other side made it clear that the “stealth” element of this mission was over. A half-dozen mercenaries of differing species on the other side eagerly fired in the general direction of the door.

“Grenades.” The commander ordered through their comms. As one, they each removed a thermal detonator from their belts and tossed them into the open door at the mercenaries. They either did not notice, or were too busy shooting at the empty space outside the door to get out of the way before four explosions silenced them. Five and Three entered into the hall, weapons ready, and checked through the remains of the bodies. 

“All clear.” Three sent over the squad channel.

The rest of the squad entered the old base. It was probably an old listening station, one of dozens used by the Republic to monitor the Outer Rim during the Clone Wars. The Outer Rim had reclaimed it from yet another encroaching government from the core, and now it was just another hive of scum and villainy.

Two pulled up the map they had been given of the facility and overlaid it across his vision with his HUD. Time had not been kind to this place or, at the very least, the mercenaries had not. Two took the lead, moving towards where the old map showed the barracks and medical bay had been. Where their target was most likely to be found.

Moving down the hallway, Two heard the distinct sound of Five’s modified blaster, and the screams of two more mercs. 

“I found something,” Five’s said over their comms.

A moment later, Three’s voice comes through. Even through the modulation, Two hears the disgust in her voice. “Commander, better send Four up here. We need a medic.”

“Is it the target?”

“Negative, sir. It looks like these mercs… Gideon had other prisoners.”

Four pushed past the rest of the squad moving into the room with the others. Two and the commander were alone in the hall a moment before Two turned to the other man, “We should probably investigate, sir.”

The younger man nodded enough that the motion translated through his helmet. “Of course, Sergeant. Lead the way.” A second later his voice came over the squad channel. “Three, the Sergeant and I are coming up. Is the area secure?”

“Affirmative, sir. Looks like the mercs guarding this area fell back once we opened up on them. Four is seeing to the prisoners now, sir.” There was a brief pause, “They look like miners, colonists. Not the kind of people you hold for ransom. And they’re in a bad way sir.”

“I understand, Three, but we have a mission. Whatever the state of these-“ His voice cut off as the two of them turned the corner to the makeshift prison. It had been one of the old barracks, and apparently all they had done was lock the door and throw what had been close to fifty people inside. Had, because from the slumped shapes along the walls it was clear not everyone had survived.

The lights inside the room were barely functioning. If these people had been there long, and even through his filter it smelled like they had been there for weeks, then they had been suffering in a dim twilight for the entire time. That explained somewhat why they were all cowering in the corner furthest from the door. He supposed their armor accounted for the rest. Four was already inside. She, at least, had the advantage of medical markings on her shoulders, chest, and helm to make it clear that she was there to help. But then, Two remembered, their target was also a doctor. At best, he had no idea these mercs were holding these people. At worst, he was directly involved in their suffering.

The commander watched from the door as Three and Five kept the hallway clear. Two could see that he was torn between his desire to let Four help these people, and the mission. But he was an officer, and it only took a minute for the mission to win, “Four, you don’t have the supplies to help these people, and we don’t have the time. When we get back to the ship we can have the captain send down proper aid. Best to keep them here until then.”

Four didn’t stop her work as the response came over their comms. Two was glad they weren’t transmitting audibly for these wretches to hear, “With respect sir, these people are facing malnourishment and clear signs of torture. I don’t want to think about what the bodies of the deceased are doing to both their mental and physical health. It would be better to move them someplace else immediately.”

“Not an option. This isn’t a rescue mission, we aren’t the New Republic. We need to acquire our target and get out. The captain will know what to do with them.”

There was a moment of tense silence before Four rose back to her feet. Putting down her scanner, she swung her pack around to take out her rations, and put out her hand towards the commander , “At least give me your rations, sir. Everyone, for that matter.”

The commander paused, but Two took out the few bars that were standard for any mission, and he saw Three and Five handing theirs over as well. They were old, leftover from the war, but still good. The commander followed their example a moment later without further argument. Two took that as a good sign. It meant this one might have potential. Some officers would have protested the waste of their supplies, but this one clearly comprehended that it was a small price to stay on mission.

She put them down and spoke aloud through her helmet to the crowd, “This is all the food we have right now. We have a ship in orbit with supplies and help. When we get back, we will send help. Don’t leave this room, there might still be some mercs left.”

One of the people closest, an older man probably some former leader looked up at them, “Who are you… you’re not New Republic?”

The commander and Four spoke at once.

“We’re not-” 

“We’re… local militia.”

With that, the assembled soldiers exited. Two noticed Five went to close the door but the commander waved him off. No point in making them feel like they had just been locked up again, and worst case they might distract a merc for them, maybe even get some payback.

Back on track, they continued on to the lowest portion of the base. It was both the most secure, and had no exit points. Their target was there. Chances were that a few mercs were still in the base, but most were probably looking for a way out. They gave each one they found an early release from their contract.

Five stopped them as they arrived at a blast door, examining the map displayed in his HUD. “Other side of this door, old armory.”

“The target’s inside?”

“If he isn’t, then he isn’t here at all.”

Two spoke up, “Can you open it?”

“No explosives, we need him alive,” the commander added.

“No problem, give me a moment.”

“Right. In position, and remember, no disintegrations.”

It only took a moment for Five to have the door ready and he waited for Two to give the order. At his signal, they into the small room.

This time it was two of Gideon’s Stormtroopers on guard. From the look of their gear, they had seen better assignments. Their armor was cracked with disrepair, and only one had a proper blaster. The other used some pistol he’d probably taken from one of the mercs. Both stormtroopers were surprised enough at their appearance to let them gun both men down. The commander entered behind the squad and walked directly to the filthy figure huddled in the corner, his arms up as if they could shield him from a blaster bolt.

“Hello, Doctor. You have information that I need.”

The man looked up at the five of them, a tremulous smile crossing his face before he realized that his guards were dead, and that Three had taken out a set of binders, “But-- but… you’re dead?”

“Well sometimes, things don’t go according to plan.”


	2. Tally Ho

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Tyrant Overthrown, a Rival Removed

The shuttle ride back up was much more comfortable than the ride down, largely to do with a lack of concern for avoiding any sensors or presumed anti-air batteries. Their ship, the _Bulwark_ slowly rose over the horizon of the planet as their shuttle broke atmosphere. It was an old Endurance class from the Galactic Civil War. The Empire had commissioned it to be a smaller, cheaper alternative to the Imperial Class when an Arquetans wasn’t sufficient, but Tarken’s doctrine of maximum strength had done away with the “tactical need” for cruisers, making the class less common as the Empire grew. And then, of course, the Rebellion had destroyed Tarkin’s centerpiece with two dozen snubfighters.

They had found the ship in one of what must have been dozens of old military depots the Empire had established along the border with the Unknown Regions. Time had been kind to the old girl, and they had found it with enough spare parts and maintenance equipment to get it back in working order fairly quickly, as well as enough light craft to stock it’s moderately sized hanger. That included the assault shuttle they were riding in now. It lacked a hyperdrive, but had the benefits of powerful shields and electronic countermeasure gear. It wasn’t a craft designed to go far from it’s carrier, but it was designed to get into places the owner wanted to keep you out of. Like most Imperial ships from that era it was ugly, grey, and lacking in all but the barest necessities of creature comforts, but it got the squad from the ship to the planet and back again safely.

The pilot put the ship down in the still crowded hanger. Even for a small ship like the Bulwark they barely had enough people to keep the thing flying, and the Empire had apparently assumed a ready labor force when they designed the thing. Two hoped the captain had a plan to fix this, because he did not intend to spend the rest of this trip cleaning out buffer errors.

The doctor was nearly comatose on the trip back. The mental gymnastics of being captured, put on an old Imperial shuttle, and flown to an old Imperial cruiser as a prisoner must be doing a number on the man. Even in his ragged clothes, it was obvious that he had been Imperial his whole life, sheltered from the harsh reality that the Empire had run on sacrifice. Preferably the sacrifice of others. 

Four was charged with keeping him lucid. It wouldn’t do to lose his knowledge now, not when they were so close, and the squad escorted him directly to the prison wing. One of the old interrogation rooms had been brought online in preparation. The Old Man had made sure that the _Bulwark_ had everything they would need to extract information without the need for physical violence, so this wouldn’t take long. Two had never understood why the Empire had decided to mix torture and interrogation. The two had opposite goals, and even back then torturing captives had just seemed like a sick game for the worst kind of Imperial Officers.

After they had secured the doctor into restraints, the commander and Two turned to leave while Three and Five prepared for the interrogation. As the doctor realized his fate, he began to plead, “No no no… please. I did everything you asked… I protected him… I PROTECTED HI-“ The door closed. Two did not expect to see the doctor again.

The commander motioned for Two to follow him to the bridge, where the captain was talking with one of the others of their small band, “Yes, I saw the report. I understand your concern but we don’t have the time, people, or resources to help. No harm in letting the New Republic deal with this.”

“Yes, sir.” Two could see the obvious look of distaste on the crewman’s face as he accepted the order to notify the New Republic about the prisoners they had found. 

In truth he shared the crewman’s feelings, but the Captain was right. There was nothing to lose from helping these people and nothing to gain from letting them die. The Captain, an older man in his fifties, turned to them as they approached, “Ah, yes. Well done down there, Lieutenant, Sergeant. I just sent orders for us to transmit a distress call about those other prisoners you found down there. There’s a New Republic outpost a day or so from here, they should be able to send help quickly.”

The commander spoke first, voicing the concern of everyone on the bridge, “Isn’t there a risk they might hear something about us from the prisoners, sir? The Old Man doesn’t want to draw that kind of heat.”

The captain gave a short nod, “Yes, but in this case, doing nothing would be worse. And if the Pubbies are busy playing savior in this sector, that gives us more time to act.”

Neither of them responded. The Captain’s word was law. That was the way of things and it wasn’t for Two to question it.

“Now, to the matter at hand.” The Captain continued, “We’ll be jumping to hyperspace as soon as we send that transmission. There’s certainly no need to take unnecessary risks. How long until you think we have his location?”

The commander spoke, “From the state of him, sir, not lon-“

Two’s comm beeped and Three’s voice crackled over the connection, “Captain, we’ve got it. Gideon is in the Nerus system. His base is on an old station located in the asteroid belt there.”

“Excellent. Good work, soldier.” The Captain turned, looking down into the navigation trench, “Navigation, plot a course to the Nerus system. Communications, send word to the Old Man. Tell him we just sniffed out the fox.”

There was a chorus of assent from the various bridge stations and Two watched through the viewport as space swirled into the blue streaks of hyperspace.

“Captain, response from the Old Man,” chimed the communications officer, “ ‘ _Tally Ho_.’”

Everyone on the bridge smiled at that. The Old Man was nothing if not poetic.

“Understood.” The Captain pushed a button on the console next to him, switching to the ship wide comms, “All crew, this is the Captain. Our weeks of hard work have finally paid off. We found him, and he won’t be able to escape this time. Report to combat stations. Fighters, prepare to launch as soon as we exit hyperspace.” He looked down at the panel in front of him, “ETA, one hour.”

He turned to the commander and Two, “I am afraid that I am going to have to ask you and your soldiers to jump right back into it. You know our objective. Once we drop out of hyperspace I’ll need you to infiltrate the ship and clear a path to Gideon.”

The commander, young as he was, simply nodded and gave a tight salute. Before he could turn however, Two spoke up, “Sir, Gideon isn’t going to be sitting around on some Clone Wars relic waiting for us to hit him. He’s going to have ships, fighters, plenty of troops. I know the Old Man has a plan but the _Bulwark_ isn’t even fully operational yet. We barely have a full squadron of fighters. Didn’t intel say Gideon has capital ships?”

The Captain just smiled, “Yes it did, Sergeant, but so do we.”

* * * * *

The _Bulwark_ dropped out of hyperspace just outside turbolaser range from where they suspected the station to be. Their intel had been partially right; there was a small station, a fuel depot from the looks of it. The doctor, however, had conveniently failed to mention the three Star Destroyers orbiting the station. One was an old model that looked as if it had been cannibalized for parts and another had clear signs of battle damage, but the third looked to be in pristine condition. That was Gideon, Two thought, shaking his head. Take from the whole to make himself appear strong. No cost was too high so long as he didn’t have to pay for it.

He also had TIE fighters, and plenty of them. Within a minute of them dropping out of hyperspace, Gideon’s people realized the _Bulwark_ was not a friendly ship. Alert fighters from all three destroyers launched. Two was sure there would be more where they came from just as soon as the pilots got to their ships. Even without more fighters however, Gideon already had more ships in space than the _Bulwark’s_ tiny complement could contend with. And while a few basic TIEs wouldn’t be a serious threat to the cruiser alone, a large enough number could easily saturate their defenses and tear the _Bulwark_ to shreds. Grey Squad was already back in their assault shuttle, waiting to get close enough to launch against Gideon’s ship. The shuttle’s breaching dock meant they could force their way close to the target, but Gideon loved his deathtrooper guards. Two only hoped his personal complement was as ramshackle as the rest of his fleet.

The rest of the squad was restless, already tired after the last op. Two had barely had time to wash, change into a clean uniform, and grab a quick bite to eat. It was obvious they were all running on stims now, and Five looks like he hadn’t even changed out of his armor in between missions. The ship rocked as the _Bulwark_ charged towards Gideon’s small fleet, turbolaser fire deflecting off their shields at this range. Two heard and felt the launch of their own small fighter complement from outside the windowless craft. He hoped those jocks were as talented as they had been bragging in the mess, otherwise their already small crew would be getting a lot smaller.

As the ship rocked from another impact, Three spoke aloud to no one in particular in that time honored tradition of nervous soldiers, “Do you think the _Bulwark_ will even be able to get us close enough to launch?”

The commander reflexively gave the wrong answer, “Just focus on the mission, Three.”

Suppressing a sigh, Two gave the right response, turning his helmet to look directly at Three, “Don’t worry, the Old Man came up with this plan. You’ll see. He’ll jump in exactly like he said he would.”

Three remained convinced, “And if he’s late?”

“He’s never late.”

“But if he is.”

Two had let this go on long enough, “Then we die.”

That did shut her up. Two felt a bit bad, he had only been working with Three since they started their hunt for Gideon, but sometimes you just had to be honest with them. Plus unlike with what appeared to be most of Gideon’s fighters, Three wasn’t some new recruit out of some jumped up conscript force. 

The ship jerked again, but this time it wasn’t from another impact. Their shuttle’s engines were powering up for launch. The commander started talking, the excitement clear in his voice, “The Old Man just arrived. Gideon’s ships were caught out of position, just like he said they’d be.”

Two smirked under his helmet. Gideon had been ISB, not fleet. Give someone like that a few big ships and he completely forgot the threat of a lighter force. The Old Man had never made that mistake.

“Launch in five, we have a clear shot to Gideon’s ship. The fighters are veering off to the Admiral’s fleet.” The pilot’s voice came loud over the internal comm. They all checked their harnesses one last time as the ship threw itself from the _Bulwark_ into the void.

In the long standing tradition of troop transports going back thousands of years, the troop bay had no windows or other means for the crew to see what was happening outside. Two was fairly certain it was to prevent passengers from being distracted from their attack by some rogue missile or fighter coming to prematurely end their mission, but right now he wished he could look outside to see the Old Man clamping shut yet another of his traps. Luckily, he only had a minute for his mind to explore that maudlin path as the pilot’s voice came over the comms once again, “Breaching in five, stack up!”

They unclipped their harnesses and all performed quick final checks of their weapons as the shuttle’s breaching airlock engaged. With any luck, they would be coming out someplace close to the bridge. Someplace close to Gideon.

“Four, three two, one… Breach!”

The shuttle jumped hard as the specialized drill tore through the outer hull of the destroyer and the hatch in the bottom hissed open to let the squad attack. In a well-practiced maneuver, the five of them dropped out of the shuttle and into the hallway of the destroyer. They had all been on ships just like this before, the Empire had not encouraged individuality in their starship design. The bridge was just two decks below them.

They had been lucky. Gideon’s men had apparently not anticipated a boarding attack and as a result the hallway was mostly clear. The crewmen who had not been injured or killed by their entrance were more interested in getting away than defending their ship.

“Form up. Three, you have the lead. Get us to the bridge.” The commander’s order came over their helmet comms.

It didn’t take long for Gideon’s stormtroopers to start showing up. At first they only ran into solitary pairs as they quickly made their way to the bridge. Within a minute, more organized bands began to show up, but none were large or cohesive enough to be more than a speed bump for the squad as they advanced.

Stepping over the newest pile of corpses, Three fired at the three troopers still smartly retreating, allowing Two a moment to reflect on their position. Grey Squad was trained for shock actions just like this one. Despite their reputation to most of the citizens of the Galaxy, stormtroopers were not garrison forces. It was nowhere close to an even fight.

Apparently, Gideon had not kept many troops in the bridge tower. If they could just get to the bridge quickly enough, they might be able to lock out most of Gideon’s troops. That was important. They were skilled, but a ship this size could have thousands of troopers.

A defensive position was beginning to form outside the bridge but it was nothing a thermal detonator couldn’t take care of. As they pushed past the aftermath into the bridge, they saw Gideon standing there with four of his favored deathtrooper guards. His looted sword hung on his hip.

“What do you think you are doing on my ship?” he challenged them as they took position at the door.

“Former Imperial Security Bureau Agent Gideon, you are under arrest,” the commander proclaimed, his helmet’s amplifiers making his voice unnaturally loud. “Tell your men to lower their weapons and surrender your ships, and I guarantee your people will be treated humanely.” Gideon had closed the door between the comms room and the actual control center, perhaps to prevent distracting his officers in their attempts to hold off the Old Man. But that mattered little. No one expected the man to surrender

“Surrender? To you? I think not,” Gideon sneered. “I don’t know who you think you are working for, but this is _my_ ship, and you are on _my_ bridge. I think you are misjudging the odds here” 

Taking courage from their leader’s derisive tone, his troopers started firing. Deathtroopers had been the ISB’s elite protective service, the best of the best from the Stormtrooper academies. But, Two thought to himself as Grey Squad took defensive positions, stormtroopers were shit guards to begin with. Like most of the old Empire, they had been more effective as shock troops than any sort of “protective” force. Far better at taking life then protecting it. Grey Squad, on the other hand, had trained most of their lives for just these kinds of operations. While they had taken cover, Gideon’s men had not. It was a brief but intense exchange before Five sealed the exit to the hall with the room four occupants fewer.

“Agent Gideon, you can surrender to me or you can surrender to the Old Man when he comes through that door,” the commander pointed behind him. “But I can guarantee you, no one else is going to help you.”

Gideon’s face seethed with barely controlled anger. Four of his men were down at the cost of two members of Grey Squad wounded. Four was helping Five at the door, and the commander was limping from a shot that glanced off the durasteel of his shin armor. Gideon dropped his blaster and went for the sword at his side, igniting a solid black blade edged in white light.

Two couldn’t help himself, “You think you’re a Jedi now? Think the Force is going to let you block three blasters from different directions and take us out like a bunch of droids?”

Gideon just smiled, settling into a fighting stance.

“Set to stun, take him down,” the commander ordered.

Three blaster bolts flashed towards Gideon. If he tried to block them the effort was of limited value at best, but instead the rings of energy just dissipated as they got close to him, expanding around him in a blue glow.

“Shit. Force field,” Three muttered aloud. Gideon smiled and lunged.

The three soldiers pulled out their vibroblades and did what they could to protect themselves. Gideon was clearly a more accomplished tyrant than sword master but the damn lightsaber only needed to touch them to take them out of the fight. Clearly aware of that fact, Gideon was less swinging it like a Jedi than using it as a prod, stabbing at them in hopes of any contact.

“Five, any word?” the commander asked breathlessly, trying to both keep Gideon from ending his career while distracting him enough to prevent him from focusing on any of them. If one of them could just slip in close enough to take out his shield...

“None, sir, but my transmitter got damaged, I’m only getting scattered reports.”

“Good or bad reports?” Three asked. She always talked when nervous, and having an enemy armed with a laser sword attempting to remove her limbs clearly activated that instinct.

“Good, I think.” The ship rocked from some major impact, “Very good, I think.”

Gideon continued his attacks but he simply couldn’t focus on any one of them long enough to land a hit. It was becoming clear to Two however that while they were all exhausted from back to back missions, Gideon was not. If something didn’t change soon, it was only a matter of time before the Moff got lucky.

There was a rapid series of impacts on the heavy blast door. The door muffled the sounds but they had all been waiting for that exact pattern. Just as they sounded, Gideon nicked the commander. Four leapt to his defense, forcing the Moff back and pulling their injured leader to safety. It looked to be a flesh wound but it still took him out of the fight and for at least a few seconds, it was now only two to one. Undesirable odds when fighting a lightsaber with combat knives.

Before the situation could worsen further for Grey Squad, Five keyed open the door and a new group of individuals stormed in. Two had a brief image of a large number of stormtrooper bodies outside before he once again lunged to the side to avoid the light-edged black blade. Gideon had apparently foreseen this and Two saw the killing stroke coming before the saber was stopped centimeters from him by a taser prod. It took Two a moment to realize he wasn’t dead, and another to realize that the Old Man had finally arrived.

Two more armored figures equipped with shock prods surrounded and struck Gideon. He couldn’t block all the new attackers, and as the electric tips made contact he went down hard, the saber dropping from his hand and the blade going dark.

“After all this time, I am disappointed to find you are still exactly as predictable as you always were, Agent Gideon,” the Old Man’s slightly monotone voice came across the room as he entered, flanked by his own deathtroopers. “From the personal shield to the deployment of your ships and forces, it really wasn’t much of a challenge. I had hoped for more after close to a decade. So unfortunate that you appear to be incapable of learning.”

Gideon looked at the Old Man, all the fight in his eyes replaced with disbelief. The Old Man’s crisp white uniform and armor provided a clear contrast to Gideon’s torn and bloodied black, “No… it can’t be you… You died!”

Grand Admiral Thrawn’s red eyes glinted as he pulled out his pistol, casually flipping the setting to stun as he raised it to the former Moff, “Not dead, merely waylaid.” 


	3. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 0 BBY (9 years ago)

0 BBY (9 years ago)

On the surface, Lothal had made sense as a base for the TIE Defender project. It was a pacified world with an educated workforce and sufficient local resources to make any potential blockade pointless. The Rebel forces had acted almost exactly as he predicted in their attack on his production facility. Their new fighter had proven an almost equal competitor for his new TIE Defender, but that just showed the wisdom of his design. 

But looking at that annoying young man, Thrawn realized he had made a mistake. He had not underestimated them, if anything he had given General Sendula and the Mandalorian too  _ much _ credit. But in their ineptitude, they had allowed the opportunity for that child to act. And at the moment of victory, it had all been swept away by a  _ spacewhale _ of all things.

He made a note to figure out how these rebels kept enlisting the local wildlife to aid them. Perhaps if Tarken was not so insistent on production over everything else, the local environments would not be stressed to such a point that they became willing victims in the Rebels exploitation of them.

But that was beside the point. Right now, his ship was being pulled through hyperspace at speeds and to a location he was not sure of. At least the stupid child had been thrown off the ship. With Bridger gone, Thrawn could worry about the real threat. Thrawn exited the destroyed bridge and made his way to the auxiliary control room. He was pleased to see that despite the damage the creatures had done, his crew was still behaving as he had trained them

“Weapons, target those creatures.”

“They are too close, the cannons can’t get a target,” came the curt reply. Thrawn was pleased to see their training keeping any panic at bay.

“Do we still have the missiles?”

“In hyperspace, sir?” the shocked lieutenant responded.

“I am open to a better idea should you have one to present, lieutenant.”

“Yes sir, understood. Preparing a spread of concussion missiles.”

“At this range we may damage the ship, sir,” another voice added.

“We shall have to take that risk,” Thrawn dismissed the concern, “If we still have comms, coordinate fire with whatever other ships you can. I want all of us to hit them at the same time.”

“There are no other ships, sir. It looks like the rest of the fleet was destroyed or fled.”

“Then it is our duty to rejoin them. I want those things off my ship.”

It took an agonizing few minutes for everything to work its way through the chain of command. Thrawn tried to not think about what was happening back on Lothal while he was stuck here. He hoped he could return in time to salvage the situation. If not, he would have to petition the Moff for an invasion fleet. His Defender program was too valuable to simply give up on, particularly if this Rebellion had the resources to actively take an Imperial planet.

“Missiles ready, sir”

“Fire.”

They did, and he watched the missiles streak around the ship and impact the titanic beasts entangling the  _ Chimaera _ . It looked like his weapons officers had launched every missile they could fire in one salvo. The warheads ripped into the beasts, causing them to squall in pain, and then everything went dark.

Thrawn woke up what felt like only a few moments later, finding himself thrown across the floor of the auxiliary control room. He stood up and righted his uniform, turning to see his crew working to do the same, “Report.”

“We are back in normal space, sir. Damage reports are coming in now,” the crewmen spent a few moments digesting the flow of information from Thrawn’s injured ship, “moderate damage to all systems. Shields are down, but hyperdrive and life support systems are fully operational.”

“Very good. Where are we?”

“Nav computer is coming online now, sir. It’s having some difficulty in charting our location. One moment.”

“Lieutenant, when I give an order I expect an answer, not an engineering report. Now what is our location?”

“One moment, sir. We are… We’re on the other side of the Empire: the Unknown Regions.”

Thrawn’s brow tightened at this. If they were in the Unknown Regions then they were in danger. There were good reasons no civilization had laid claim to this space in recorded history, “Can you chart a course back for Lothal?”

“Working on it, Admiral. There are some problems with the navcomp. It’s…”

“Lieutenant, this is not the time for half-answers. If there is a problem with the navigation systems then get a repair crew on it.”

“That’s the thing, sir. The system checks out, but the chronometer is giving an error. According to the system, it’s five years from when we entered hyperspace over Lothal...”

Thrawn refused to show his concern at this disturbing statement, “Do we still have communications?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Contact Imperial Command. I need to know the situation and inform the Emperor of our condition.”

There was a pause, but nothing appeared on the small holo-display in the control room. Thrawn turned to the crewman manning comms with an expectant eye.

“I’m not getting any response, sir. I’ve tried all the military and civilian channels. It’s as if the Empire just isn’t… Wait, I’m getting something now. It’s a recording.”

“Put it through.”

The image crystallized into a woman. She looked older but Thrawn still recognized the displaced Senator Mothma. She was standing in front of what looked suspiciously like a formalized version of the Wren’s firebird emblem that the Lothal rebels had adopted. He refused to let that train of thought continue as the sound cut in.

“-the New Republic is dedicated to the terms of the Galactic Concordance. We were all victims of the Empire, including those of you who served them. Turn yourselves in and I personally guarantee-” Thrawn shut it off.

He turned to the crewmen on comms, “Is this all you could find?”

“I’m getting some limited coded transmissions from a few scattered units.”

The light returned to Thrawn's eyes. If that self-named Jedi had delayed him, he was clearly not defeated, “Then we have something to work with. Transmit General Order 13 on the contingency band.” Thrawn entered a set of coordinates on his control pad, “and set course for these coordinates. We have a lot of work to do.”


	4. My People are Reclusive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Find the Child, Secure the Rim

It had been a day since the victory over Gideon. Of the three destroyers, only one was salvageable, but that was still one more ship for their fleet. Once Gideon had been captured, the battle had ended quickly as his remaining men lost the will to fight without their leader. Some of them had been worth retaining, most were not worth the effort.

It had been almost a year since Two had visited the bridge of the  _ Chimaera _ . He hadn’t served with Thrawn during the Civil War, only joining the Grand Admiral when he reappeared three years ago. As Two saw it, with the collapse of the Remnant over Jakku, Thrawn was the Empire. And he had yet to issue any orders that involved burning the planet's atmosphere or crashing ships into planets, which put him above every commander since Admiral Sloane had been killed in Two’s book.

The commander accompanied him, as did their counterparts from Thrawn’s other SpecForce team, Blue Squad. The five of them stood around Thrawn’s holotable receiving an update on their next orders from the Old Man himself.

“It is unfortunate that Agent Gideon appeared to have had more talent for performing interrogations than resisting them. I expected him to yield the information I wanted without too much effort. I did not, however, expect him to expire so early on in the process.”

There was a pause, but no one spoke. Everyone knew better than to speak unless the Old Man addressed them explicitly. They waited as he laid out their next steps, “His knowledge was equally disappointing. It appears the former Agent was also chasing his own mystery. We know the old Empire is shattered. What core systems that have not succumbed to this New Republic are scattered and disarmed. The Outer Rim is split between warlords such as Gideon and criminal enterprises as creating a level of chaos not seen since before the Clone Wars. It seems Gideon thought there was a third option. Sergeant, you served under Inspector General Versio following Endor, correct?”

“Yes sir,” Two responded.

“And you were involved in Operation Cinder?”

“Briefly, sir. My team was under orders to track down and destroy supply depots in the Outer Rim to prevent the Rebels from obtaining them. We were engaged there when we received your orders, sir.”

“Yes… It would have been a lamentable waste to lose the resources I put years into collecting. And you still hold that the orders were to gather all remaining loyal forces over Jakku?”

“Yes sir. May I ask why?”

“Because, Sergeant, it appears Gideon believes that there is yet another Remnant faction.”

Blue’s commander, an older officer Two had a grudging respect for who had served with the Old Man from before his skip, spoke up, “You don’t mean those rumors of the ships that fled to the Unknown Regions, sir?”

“No, Lieutenant. Given the quality of who survived that battle, it is highly unlikely they would have survived in the Unknown Regions without a pre-existing industrial base. You can’t just raise Star Destroyers from the dirt. Even if there are survivors out there, it is unlikely they would be in sufficient numbers to draw Agent Gideon’s rapt attention.”

“Could he have been trying to reach your people, sir?” the commander asked hesitantly. Two understood that Thrawn came from the Unknown Regions, and that was about all anyone knew.

“Also unlikely. My people are reclusive and have no desire to entangle themselves with the chaos of this part of the galaxy. I have also quietly made my own overtures to the Ascendancy, and they are neither hosting Remnants nor do they have the desire to do so. No, whatever Gideon was after he thought it was worth squandering his remaining resources on and risking exposure to the New Republic. Even out here, his increasingly brazen attacks were drawing their attention.”

The Old Man switched the direction of the conversation, “What he did know was a method of contacting this new faction. Unfortunately, the limited information Agent Gideon's provided isnot sufficient for me to determine if this was in response to a threat or an attempt to gain an ally.”

“Gideon wasn’t one to share, sir. If he was looking for this faction, it’s more likely it was to conquer it or destroy it.” Two offered.

“A correct assumption, Sergeant. And now that task falls to us, to you specifically. The key to making this communication apparently lies in the unique genetics of a child of unknown species that Gideon has been tracking for months. Grey Squad, your task is to locate this child and return it here. Blue squad will remain with me to search through Gideon’s forces in the sector and uncover new information. If there is a new faction rising in the Unknown Regions, then it is likely the kind of threat I have been preparing for since the Empire was founded. We will not fail this mission now.”

“Yes sir!” everyone responded as one.

“Lieutenant, how long until the  _ Bulwark _ is repaired?”

“The Captain says they took only minor damage, but our fighter squadron took heavy casualties. We are also still on a skeleton crew. Aur overall efficiency is low, Grand Admiral.”

“I will reinforce your fighter squadron and provide additional crew for the ship. I am also going to assign you the Arquitens class light cruisers  _ Serpent  _ and  _ Berserker _ for escorts.”

The commander just nodded at this but Two noted that the Old Man had not mentioned providing them any Stormtroopers. Given, by this time the quality of the remaining troopers was suspect at best, but sometimes you just needed to throw bodies at a problem.

“The Agent also provided a lead for you to act upon. The Child was originally turned over to Gideon’s forces by a Mandalorian bounty hunter. The same Mandalorian apparently then returned and retrieved the child. This Manadalorian  _ also _ expelled Gideon from Navaro some weeks later, with assistance from the Bounty Hunter’s Guild. The planet is back under the control of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild, so it can be assumed they are shielding him from third parties.”

“We will start our investigation there then, Grand Admiral.”

“Lieutenant, the locals have just overthrown an Imperial occupation a few months ago. We will not repeat Gideon’s mistake.”

Two spoke up, “Don’t worry, Sir. We’re just another mercenary group with a bunch of salvaged Civil War ships looking for work. It’ll be an easy intel mission.”

*  *  *  *  *

On the shuttle back to the  _ Bulwark _ the commander turned to Two, “Do you really expect they will buy an independent militia group, Two?”

“If we go in with one of the light cruisers and keep it to just the squad, then we can probably pull it off. Those ships date to the Clone Wars. There’re plenty of them floating about in local militias and pirate fleets.”

“And you expect we can just walk in and ask them about this Mandalorian?”

“Mandalorians are scarce out here, sir, especially since the Purge. If we ask directly, they will likely shoot us on principle. But if we say we’re Imp hunters, that should loosen some tongues.”

“How do you know the Mandalorian isn’t still on the planet, or hasn’t fled back to Mandalore?”

Two forgot some times that the commander was new to all this. He had grown up out here, on a small Imperial Academy too remote to have gotten caught up in the final death throes of the Empire. Thrawn had found them two years ago, and now the remote Academy was once again providing new recruits to Thrawn’s reconstituted Seventh Fleet. The commander had been the top of his class, but even a big fish in a little pond could be a minnow in the ocean.

“Sir, any Mandalorian still out here has a reason to stay away from Mandalore. They are probably from one of the old rebel tribes of the Clone Wars, or the Civil War. Or small units afraid of another Purge. Gideon did a number on them when he took out the Kryze Government. They've gone back to isolation and rebuilding. Mandalorians never really work alone, he’s got some Tribe somewhere that he’s supporting or that’s supporting him. I looked into it, Gideon apparently took out a couple dozen of them when he occupied the planet.”

“So we find his Tribe, we find the Child?”

“Too much of what we’ve heard about what happened is rumor and spacer’s tales. We need to know what really happened to know whether there really was a Tribe there, or if the Mandalorian was just working Guild jobs, with a larger group located somewhere off-world.”

The commander was clearly not convinced, “There are too many unknowns here. I could talk to the Admiral, request a few battalions of Troopers to let us occupy the planet and interrogate-”

“Gideon tried that, sir. It did not end well for him. The Old Man-”

“Grand Admiral, Sergeant.”

“Sorry, Sir. Grand Admiral Thrawn is sending us in so we can do this quick and quiet. That’s our speciality, sir. We go in low-profile and they won’t know us from any of the other low-lifes in the place.”

The commander seemed to accept this, but voiced aloud what was also on Two’s mind, “Three and Four came through the Skip with the Old Man. They never saw this area during the war. Are you confident they can blend with the locals?”

“Honestly, sir, one piece of crap Outer Rim dustball is like any other. Before the Empire, after it, shit all smells the same.”

The rest of the shuttle ride was spent in silence. When they arrived back on the  _ Bulwark, _ One went to the bridge while Two went to their unit’s locker room. While en route, he commed the rest of the squad to be waiting there for him. As the door hissed open, he wasn’t disappointed.

“What orders from the Old Man, sir?” Three asked. She had served with Thrawn the longest, and had been the first of the Squad to begin using the unofficial moniker for the Grand Admiral. Although that was a bit unfair, as almost everyone who had come from the  _ Chimaera _ called him some variant of that.

“New target. Gideon was after a child, some special alien. A Mandalorian has the kid. So we find the Mandalorian, get the kid, and return him to the Old Man.”

Four looked a bit concerned by this. It reminded Two why he was glad they wore helmets when on mission. None of them were particularly good at hiding their emotions. You didn’t have to be when you spent your life behind a mask, “Sir, why does the Old Man want a child?”

“Because Gideon was obsessed with finding him. Thought he was the key to something in the Unknown Regions.”

Five looked up at this. He had come from the border between the old Empire and the Unknown Regions. The Old Man had established dozens of secret bases in the old Empire that he had utilized liberally over the past three years to rebuild the Seventh. Those had included bunkers filled with crews who had volunteered for stasis or long-term rotations to provide a small army in case something encroached on the Empire’s borders from the wild half of the galaxy. He understood the dangers that lay off the maps, “Do we know what it is?”

“Something the Old Man believed Gideon was trying to either take for himself or destroy. Given the state of his troops, we should be fine.” Two responded. “Apparently, the Mandalorian worked contracts for the Bounty Hunter’s Guild. They have a large office on Navarro. The Mandalorian used to operate from there, so it’s where we start.”

“We’re not an occupation force,” Three pointed out.

“Which is why this is a recon mission. We go in, learn what we can about the Mandalorian and the kid. If possible, where he is hiding. If not, where his Tribe is.”

“Tribe?” Three asked.

“Mandalorians are like Jawas. Where there's one, there’s a whole clan somewhere nearby.” Five chimed in. “Little groups have been popping up and disappearing all across the Outer Rim since the Purge. The respectable ones went back to Mandalore when the war ended.”

“So what does that make these ones?”

“Threats,” Five said, pulling out his blaster and starting to clean it.


	5. They Are Clients Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Liberated Planet, a Deserted Helm

As the shuttle traveled from the _Bulwark_ down to the settlement’s only spaceport, an ambitious name for a lava field kept mostly clean of Jawas, Two wondered briefly how many planets he’d been to over the years just like this one. 

There were a number of species for whom expansion was natural, humans not the least among them. The Outer Rim was full of little settlements like this one. A small town with maybe a few thousand people scraping by on mining, farming, or just being a place other ships could stop off and breathe something that hadn’t been run through a ship’s recycler a thousand times. Two suspected about half of these settlements had been founded by people seeking to flee the comparatively crowded Core. Many of them dated to the dying days of the Republic, just before the Clone Wars. the following thirty years had not exactly been the best environment under which to start a small, undefended colony.

The irony was, in looking to escape, those people had just made themselves easier to find. The Empire had always fed rumors of their life-sign scanners, and while it was possible to detect life from orbit, identifying a specific species was almost impossible. As it turned out, it was much easier to find a lone farmer by his reactor than his life force. Those tricks had died out with the Jedi. Two knew the smart ones had either gone to some more populated planet and just disappeared into the background, or lived primitively in a swamp somewhere. Hell, he’d take searching out a target in the Rim over Coruscant any day. They were easier to find, and you were less likely to get shot in someone else’s crossfire in the process.

So when their shuttle, somewhat shoddily repaired after the attack on Gideon, landed, Two knew what he was getting into. The rest of the squad was there, but that was it. The _Bulwark_ still had only a skeleton crew, but the Old Man had restocked the fighter wing and left them a small gift: bombers. Two couldn’t imagine why they would need bombers for this mission, from what they saw the complete “defense” force of the Navarro was whatever Bounty Hunters happened to be here, and all their ships were conveniently at the space port.

Conveniently, the same spaceport _Bulwarks_ turbolasers were trained on. Two desperately hoped the commander wouldn’t do something stupid enough to make them need them. Actually, he thought, check that. The commander was an officer, Two knew he could keep an eye on him. It was Five or Three in their ignorance of life in the Outer Rim who would be more likely to make a scene.

The five of them made their way to the common house the Guild operated out of. The place had obviously recently been rebuilt, and Two took note of the reinforced materials used in the job. It looked like the place could shrug off an attack from an E-Web at this point.

The commander motioned to them as they approached the building, “Now remember, once inside Two does the talking. Five, make sure you record everything. Three and Four, just act like the hired muscle.”

“I am the hired muscle,” Three said, clearly enjoying being out in their makeshift disguises. “So where’s the big Guild operation? Are we meeting someone in that shitty cantina?

Two sighed, upset that his face was open making his annoyance obvious to the squad, “Three, this isn’t the Core. That ‘shitty cantina’ is as close to big as you get out here. At least it looks like well-built.” Two hated how obvious his accent was without his helmet’s modulator. In the Empire, it only paid to be different if you were exceptional, and even then only when someone in power decided you were worth possessing. The Old Man was of such quality, Two wasn’t sure he was.

“Wait, these yokels tossed out a battalion of-”

Two turned and shot Three a look. Not having a helmet meant that the anger in his eyes was obvious, “Yes, they did. Look around: sure it’s a shitty cantina, but the Guild also owns every shitty shop and stall within a block. If something happens, they’ve got plenty of people here. You saw what Gideon threw at these people. Having their planet back isn’t a compliment.”

“Both of you shut up. As much as your lecture improves our authenticity, Two, we’re here.”

Two gave a quiet nod and glared daggers at Three to stop her saluting. Aborting the motion, she gave Two a shit-eating grin. He took note of it for when they got back to the ship. Five and Four still wore their helms. It would mark them if they all covered their faces. There were a lot of former Imperials going around trying to pass as bounty-hunters, or working for the crime syndicates that thrived in the power vacuum left behind by the Empire. Four humans in a group would already draw attention, they couldn’t all cover up.

Two took stock as they entered the common room. There was a droid at the bar (apparently a new model, likely another replacement), and about a dozen hunters lounging around. Only two of them looked like actual threats. At a table in the middle sat their target: Guild Magistrate Greef Karga. There was no way the man was there without a bodyguard, and a quick scan revealed the most likely option. Sitting at a table strategically far from him was a woman, ex military- no ex Alliance dropper, who managed to watch both the Magistrate and their small group. She was the bodyguard. She was the threat. Two sent a discrete signal to Four, _Dropper, Two Tables Right, Watch_ as he followed the Commander over to the Magistrate.

Everyone had noticed their approach at this point, and the room quieted some. Two chalked it up to the fact that it was a small town where new faces were more likely than not to bring trouble. Karga stood, his arms wide as if welcoming an old friend, “Welcome! Welcome to Navarro. I was told new faces had arrived, and new faces in my town mean only one thing... Business! What can this humble establishment do for you?”

The commander grasped the Magistrate’s hand in the firm but reserved manner of underworld scum across the galaxy, “We’re from Cadia. Mid-Rim, Interior Guard. We just gained our independence from the governor, Warlord.”

Greef gave what Two assumed was a common look out here that translated roughly to, _welcome to freedom, friend, do you have money?_ “I see… I assume you have some mopping up to do and you’re hoping my organization can assist.”

And here was where the Old Man thought on a different level than nearly every other Imperial Two had ever met. The commander took out a half-dozen pucks, all of them Imperials who had worked for Gideon. Half of them had died in the attack, and the other were still on the run. If the bounty hunters of the Guild found them before the Old Man did, they would still be out of the Squad’s way. 

These planets were all insular, and thought everyone else acted just the same. No one would bat an eye at the Empire giving away a few people on a mission, but not a half-dozen senior officers, some on the New Republic’s most wanted. This would do more to purchase them legitimacy here than any number of open faces.

Greef looked through the pucks for a moment before making a gesture. The dropper, clearly more than just a bodyguard, and another came over. Sifting through the pucks themselves, the three had a brief discussion before he turned back to the commander, “You’ve got some dangerous targets here. I can put bounties out for them, but the rate to put them all out at once will not be cheap.”

The commander smiled, “If I could find them cheaply, I would have already done so. I was told you had the best of the Guild working out of here, and that is what I am willing to pay for. Standard Guild rates, a bonus if brought back alive.”

Karga raised an eyebrow, “I see. You have a down payment?”

The commander motioned. Two stepped forward with the case he had been carrying and set it down, keying in the sequence to open it. Inside was a mix of old Imperial and New Republic credits, a common feature of large sums of currency this far out. It would be enough to cover the full bounties outright. It was also nothing to the Old Man.

Karga motioned to the dropper, who glanced through it before looking up with an unimpressed expression, “Half of this is old Imperial.”

“Until a month ago our planet was under a remnant warlord. I’m told they still spend, unless you’re planning to go back to the Core anytime soon?”

The woman gave the commander a joyless smile, but closed the case, “We’ll make do. I’ll count it to verify but this should be enough to post.”

“It will be enough to cover all the expenses.” Two said. The softly accented words appeared to startle the group, as if they had forgotten he was standing there.

The woman gave another cold smile, “I’ll still need to verify that.”

“Now, now, these gentlemen have just won back the freedom of their planet! We were in similar straits not too long ago, and remember how long it took to get rid of the Imperial script then?” Greef turns back to the group, waving one hand reassuringly, “Once it checks out, I’ll post these bounties.”

“Excellent,” the commander responded, “I know bounty hunting can be an unpredictable business, but my government is eager to bring these men to justice. Do you know how long it might take to bring them in?”

Karga just smiled, “Well, that depends, doesn’t it? On who’s available, how difficult the target is... You’ve given very complete files, and we’ve recently acquired a taste, you could say, for ex-Imperials. You won’t be disappointed.”

“Good,” rising, the commander shook hands with Grief, and motioned the team to follow him as he left the cantina.

* * * * *

“They are Imps, Greef,” the dropper’s voice came over Two’s comm. The transmitter they had hidden in the case appeared to be working fine.

“Of course they were Imps. Cadia’s only been independent for a few months-”

“I said _are,_ not _were_.” The dropper interrupted, more than a hint of disgust in her voice. “I've seen those types before.”

“You think they work for a warlord?”

“Not sure. But the leader was definitely an officer. Doesn’t matter how much dirt you throw on them, it doesn’t cover up the contempt.”

“The rest didn’t look like stormtroopers,” Greef responded.

“No. Core battalions didn’t accept women. Or non-humans.”

“Well, their money is good. I don’t care who they were, they’re clients now.”

There was a pause before the conversation resumed, “So you’re not worried?”

“Thought that’s what I pay you for.”

“Alight, then how about this. What if they’re scouts for whoever was paying Gideon, looking to come back and take another look at what’s left? Maybe he thinks there’s still something to find down in the sewers.”

There was the sound of more shuffling, they were clearly looking over the files the commander had given them. _Look all you want_ , Two thought with a small smile. The files were legitimate

The commander looked to him, “Sewers?”

The rest of them shrugged. Two spoke up, “Perhaps worth a check, sir? Gideon clearly thought something was down there. Maybe something to do with the Mandalorians?”

“What would be left?” Three asked, sounding unconvinced.

“Bodies, perhaps something they left behind. Something we could use to track the Mando?” Two offered.

“Well, it’s a better use of our time than this gossip. Let’s go,” the commander motioned.

It took them about twenty minutes to find an open entrance to the sewers. For such a small town, whoever had designed the sewers had been thinking ahead. They were massive, practically an undercity. Two didn’t want to think too long about how many could have been camped down here. Easily hundreds.

Which made it that much more awkward when, an hour later, they hadn’t found anything of note. The damned Jawas had probably stripped the place clean months ago. They were heading back to the entrance they’d come down through when Five halted them, pointing to around the corner. Sitting there, almost covered up in the dirt was a helmet with a black glass T-visor. The commander motioned them forward while Five approached the helm, scanning it before he moved to pick it up. As he touched the piece of old armor, a blaster bolt nearly took Five out.

“Took you long enough to find it, Imp. Looking to take this place back for Gideon?”

It only took seconds before Grey Squad had weapons out and were undercover, but wherever the shooter was, they were smart enough to stay out of their line of sight. Two cursed at being caught out without his helmet. The light was so poor he had no way of seeing whoever their attacker was.

He tried a new approach, “And if I told you I wasn’t working for Gideon?”

A bolt landed in the front of his cover, forcing him to keep his head down and resist peering at their attacker, “Well, you just confirmed you’re an Imp, so I don’t much care.” He recognized the voice. It was the Dropper from the cantina.

The commander was clearly not having this. He looked to Four, who was closest and wore her helmet, “Get a look at her. see if she’s alone.”

A few seconds and several blaster bolts later she commed back a slightly stressed response, “She’s at the other end of the hall. Not alone. Looks like about a dozen bounty hunters with her.”

“Shit. Options?”

“Grenades?” Three asked with a grin. Two hoped that expression wasn’t always under her helmet, the ones who enjoyed the fighting tended to have short careers.

“Could bring down the roof, sir.” He pointed out. “Not sure how stable this place is.”

“How about you come out, Imp rats? You only got about a minute anyway, let’s just make it quick.”

Two knew that meant a flanking force was more than likely on its way. Shit, she had probably mentioned the sewers on purpose to lead them down here. This entire trip had just been a trap. He looked to the commander and mouthed one word, _“Stunners”_

The man nodded, and they signaled the order to everyone else. As one, Grey Squad each pulled out a stun grenade and readied them. Even if they were too far to actually hit the hunters, they would still make a nice distraction.

Two got an idea, “Five, you’ve been mapping the sewers, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Find us a new way out. There’s going to be a trap waiting for us back where we came in. ”

There was a pause, “You know I only mapped where we’ve been, right? I don’t know another exit.”

“Then take us away from the entrance you know. We’ll use the grenades as a distraction for an escape. Go in five.” 

The others nodded as he mentally counted down and tossed his grenade. The rest followed. As they did, Five booked it back the way they had come. Two caught up, readying his weapon and motioned to the rest, “ _Be alert, ambush.”_

He didn’t need to see their nods or their grim expressions to know they were ready. They turned the corner, surprising their would-be attackers. Bounty hunters were decent at tracking down prisoners and maybe taking people by surprise. But they weren't soldiers, and these ones were shitty shots. Five dead bounty hunters later, and they were continuing to push forward. Five spoke up, “I’m reading some air-flow up ahead, might be an exit.”

A minute later, they reached a sewer grate. One charge later and they were out, making their way through the streets and to the spaceport. Their luck held; apparently the Dropper had not expected them to escape the sewers so quickly. As they piled into the shuttle, the pilot was already powering the craft up, and seconds after the last one of the squad made it up the ramp, the craft lifted smoothly off the ground. In the troop-bay, Two could only hear the pilot’s responses as they made it back to the safety of the _Bulwark_ , but it seemed they weren’t being followed. They had made a clean escape, and all it cost was a pittance of money from a fallen government, a few dirtball bounty hunters, and a half-dozen traitors.


	6. General Order 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reinforcements for the fight, More meat for the Machine

_“Djarin, I’m not sure if you’ll get this, but someone is still looking for you. They said they aren’t with Gideon, but I’m not sure if that is a good thing or bad thing. They went down into the sewers and found the helmet. They were looking for Mandalorians. I know you left months ago but look mando, be careful, there can't be that many of you out there.”_

The squad and the captain stood around the comms table watching the transmission from the planet. The vast majority of rumors spread by the Empire surrounding their surveillance were false, but the _Bulwark_ was fitted with equipment to intercept local comms traffic. And the Old Man had been right. Keep their heads down, poke the hive, and wait. Someone would reach out to warn their friends, and in doing so give them the information they needed.

The Captain looked to the commander, “I’m not sure what this tells us. We have a name, perhaps a pseudonym, and know he’s not there anymore.”

“Incorrect,” the Old Man said through his hologram, “This confirms that there are multiple Mandalorians in this region. Interesting, they’ve never traveled out this far in numbers before.”

“The Purge, Admiral,” the Captain said. “It scattered many of the old clans and warrior groups. This could be a remnant of one of those. But the rumors from Gideon implied as much. I don’t see what is new here.”

“Ah, but this message is only part of what we learned, is that not right, Lieutenant?” Thrawn said, his hologram turning to the commander.

“Yes, sir. The bounty hunters used one of the old helmets of the Mandalorians as bait for their trap. We didn’t recover the piece of armor, but my technical expert did get a complete scan of it.” The table changed to Five’s analysis of the helm they found before the Dropper had ambushed them. “Our scans showed the helm is genuine, forged beskar. Assuming it comes from the same group, and we have no reason to suspect it does not, then this is as important as their communication.”

The Captain was not impressed, but Navy-types never were with ground-pounder work, “And what does some dead Mando’s helm tell us, exactly?”

In the silence, the commander turned to Two. He had noticed it in reviewing Five’s scans back on the ship, so the commander had decided to put him on the spot. Fine, the Old Man would prefer his information from the source anyway, “It isn’t just a helm sir. To begin with, it’s old. Forged pre-Clone Wars. Most of the clans re-forge armor for each generation to fit the wearer. This thing is nearly thirty years old, which means this clan isn’t some group of stragglers from after the civil war on Mandalore. This confirms it.”

The image in the holotable zoomed in on an icon on the helm, a jagged crown or perhaps some form of predatory bird. Entirely more sinister than the symbol of the New Republic; all jagged edges and claws. Two pointed to it, “This is a symbol for a group of Mandalorians known as the Death Watch. They were an extremist sect during the Clone Wars, wanted to rebuild the Mandalorian Empire. This particular unit however, were their Commandos.”

“Their elite?” the Captain asked.

“Not exactly. Their terror troops. They specialized in hit and run tactics, guerilla raids, operating behind enemy lines. When the Mandalorian Civil War ended with them siding with the Rebellion, this unit went deep into Imperial space hitting soft targets. Civilians loyal to the Empire, shipping hubs, logistics centers.”

Two noticed everyone looking almost surprised. It was one thing to hear the propaganda of what the Old Empire had said the Rebels were, it was another to be reminded that not every element of that propaganda had been false, “So then if they’re Rebels, why are they hiding?”

Two replied, “When we pushed back the Rebels Mid Rim Offensive, they got cut off and just kept fighting. I was serving on Pantora when they hit our primary spacedock, claiming the planet’s loyalty made us fair targets,” Two paused, glad to have his helmet back on. “They took out the main reactor of the spaceport, destroyed a Destroyer and damaged several other ships. They also killed ten-thousand Pantoran citizens.”

“So they’re Rebel extremists, how does this help us?”

“Because now we know our enemy, Captain,” the Old Man responded. “These Death Watch cannot return home, the New Republic would see them tried as criminals. They are isolated and injured, which changes how we must interact with them. I have recently acquired some... experts in this area. I will prepare them to assist you.”

“So what is our next move, sir? The transmission was sent out through a dozen communication hubs, a general message, I doubt they even know where the target is. How does this help us find him?”

The Old Man looked to the Captain, “I would think our next move is obvious. What we have learned, what our enemy has shared with us in their ineffective trap, has provided me everything I need to locate our errant bounty hunter. Where once we were looking for a single man in a sector, we now have many possibilities. All we need to do is locate any member of this Death Watch, and they will lead us to our target.”

“With respect sir, the _Bulwark_ doesn’t have the resources for that kind of hunt. We don’t have the people for a fight against Mandalorians,” the commander pointed out.

Thrawn nodded, “An astute point, lieutenant. Captain, there is a depot located in the Fosle system. I believe it will be able to solve your manpower problem. Head there and resupply. While you do, I will focus my resources on locating a member of this ‘Tribe’.”

* * * * *

Fosle was an unremarkable, uninhabited system on the edge of the Rim, which made it perfect for the Old Man. On the third planet, a gasless rock, there was an Imperial Supply Dock similar to the one where they had found the _Bulwark_. Thrawn must have seeded hundreds of these around the Rim, and now they were keeping his fleet alive. Two was glad that none of the Warlords seemed to know about them. They had been part of the Old Man’s plans with the Emperor, and he shuddered to think what these resources would have done in someone like Gideon’s hands.

Grey Squad made up the landing party from the ship. In truth, there wasn’t anyone else on the _Bulwark_ who was available, a problem Two hoped they were about to resolve. The base was a large armory, almost entirely small arms and armor, a few transports and light mechanized units. This stuff looked old, early Empire at best, some of it late Clone Wars.

The commander keyed in the access code the Old Man had given them and they entered the main room, and stopped.

“Fuck,” Four said. Hundreds of cryo tubes lined the walls, and inside the tubes were clones. Their reinforcements. 

“The Old Man can’t be serious, can he?”

“I don’t think he jokes,” the commander replied, walking over to the nearest tube and beginning the reanimation process. Two watched as the old model cryo pod sprung to life, lights flashing in patterns as the front lowered to be level with the floor. Two could see the steam rising as the pod warmed, decades of condensation melting and vaporizing as the pod woke it’s occupant from his long sleep. A display next to the pod began listing off processes and status updates too quickly for Two to catch them. After the machine determined it was ready the door opened and the clone inside slumped onto the hard floor of the depot. Two noticed he was in the common under-armor they all wore and recognized the archaic rank badge. The commander had not just woken up one at random, this was their captain.

It took the clone a few seconds to realize where he was. He staggered from his knees to a standing position, and only then noticed the five of them, “Wha-- What-”

“Clone Commander CT-74219, I am activating General Order 15. Respond.”

It was eerie to see the confusion on the clone’s face just disappear, replaced by something almost mechanical. Two had served with a few of the last clones the Empire had used before opening the Academies. He had never liked them, and this reminded him why. Droids were one thing, but this was just… wrong.

“CT-74219, General Order 15 Confirmed, My Lord. Contingency acknowledged, my men are at your command.”

“Very good, Captain. Begin reanimation and equipping your men. I have a ship in orbit, we need to begin shuttling immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

The process took a few hours and Two couldn’t help but notice that while most of the clones fell into compliance quickly, some seemed to unfreeze wrong. They seemed confused and sluggish as they assembled. He mentioned it to Four, and she nodded.

“Yeah, long-term cryo degradation. Honestly, given how long they’ve been out here and the state of this equipment I’m not surprised. A facility like this should receive regular maintenance, but this place has been on minimal operations for years. Probably since Endor.”

Two didn’t like the sound of that, “Is it going to cause a problem?”

Four looked to him, and he could imagine the expression behind her helmet, “Oh yeah. If you need them to do anything but charge an enemy you're probably out of luck. And I’d separate them out really quick from the rest. I’ll speak with their medics.”

“You trust them to cull their own?”

“They're clones, Sarge. They don’t exactly have a choice, do they? Plus, it’s the best thing you can do for them. Put them together, monitor for the ones that have issues. Maybe some of them get better. If not, at least they aren’t dragging down morale for the rest.”

Two was surprised, Four was never this cold. This was the opposite of the raid on the pirate base, “You alright, Four?”

She didn’t look at him this time, “My family used to live on Chardaan. During the war it was occupied by both sides at different points. They had to flee before I was born. We were loyal, Sarge, but to the clones, we were just in the way. All that old propaganda on them being better than the droids... Well, you tend to stop believing it when both are aiming blasters at you.”

Two nodded and turned away. He made a note to keep Four away from their new Stormtrooper battalion. He approached the commander, who was talking to the Clone Captain. He had changed into a suit of the old Phase 2 armor from the war, but at least it was in the familiar white of the Empire. The commander was just finishing a debriefing as Two walked up, “And this is my 2nd, Sergeant Two. Names are classified for security reasons.”

“I understand, Sir,” the clone turned to him. In the armor he was just another stormtrooper officer, “Sir, about half of my unit is suffering cryo-decay. Until we can get them to a medical facility to recover, I’m only at half strength.”

Two nodded, “Let’s hope then that I don’t need that many of your men, 47219. It shouldn’t be a problem though. We just need some muscle for a covert mission, no occupation or pitched battles.”

The commander jumped in, “Once we are done we can get you men the help they need. Until then they can rest on the _Bulwark_. Sergeant, we should be ready to go in a few minutes.”

The clone gave a sharp salute at this, “Yes, sir. And commander, if it’s easier, I go by Clockwork to the men.”

Two nodded, “Of course, Clockwork. Far from the first pseudonym around here.”

“The Captain and an escort will be riding with us. From now on, normal security unless the mission requires otherwise.”

“Yes, sir,” they both responded.

As the commander left, Two walked with him, “Sir, there might be a minor complication with Four.”

“She’s got a problem with troopers? Two, this is not the time for inner-service bullshit.”

“No, sir. With clones.”

He shrugged, “They have medics of their own. She can put her parent’s trauma behind her.”

Two ignored the fact that the commander already seemed aware of Four’s history. He was an officer, they were grunts, that was natural, “Sir… I don’t need our medic distracted by our own backup.”

The two of them stepped onto the shuttle, and the conversation broke off on the ride back to the _Bulwark_. Once the shuttle landed, the commander hung back until Four was out of hearing before starting up the conversation again as if they had never stopped, “If you are that concerned about her ability, I can ask the Admiral to replace her.”

It was the right response for an officer, but wrong for a leader. That was the problem with the Empire. It was a machine, and a machine didn’t encourage loyalty, it encouraged obedience. If one piece wasn’t working, you replaced it. Four was good at her job, and he knew how important a trusted, competent medic was. He wasn’t going to risk the Old Man sending in someone new.

“No, sir. There won’t be a problem.”


	7. We Can Take Him Down, Sir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warriors from the Past, Warfare as Statistics

The ship was another relic from the Clone Wars. An old Mandalorian combat transport, designed to deploy platoons of their jetpack-wearing troops quickly. It was more of the past crawling back as if from some nightmare. But then Two watched the two clones standing guard in the back of the bridge, and he wondered idly when they would run into a reactivated droid army.

The Old Man had sent them the details on the ship two days ago. It had taken the Bulwark that long just to catch up with it. The ship had left the planet just as they exited hyperspace. On the plus side, their cruiser wasn’t so unusual out here as to garner immediate attention, as dozens of planets were using similar old ships in their cobbled together fleets.

“Sir, we have acquired the target. Three minutes until it’s within range. Shall I hail them?” 

“Are we on an intercept course?”

“Negative, sir,” came the response from the helm. “We could divert, but the target is flying outside the normal travel lanes. It would become immediately obvious if we were to change course to match them.”

The Captain moved to the forward viewing window, hands behind his back in the universal pose of ship commanders, “Is the target preparing for hyperspace? Do we have any guesses on his destination?”

A ship traveling within hyperspace was impossible to detect. But it was only possible to travel in a straight line at faster than light speeds. Even in hyperspace, any impact with an object large enough to have it’s own gravity field could destroy your ship. And Gravity tended to do unfortunate things to hyperdrives It was for exactly these reasons that mapped hyperspace lanes were so critical With a large enough navigational database it was possible to predict, if not exactly track, a ship’s destination, so long as their initial positioning and orientation were known.

“They are not making for the transition point for any of the normal lanes, sir. It looks like he’s taking a bit of a round-about course to throw off any casual observation of his path.”

Two approached the Captain, “Are you thinking he could be returning to the other Mandalorians, sir? If that’s the case, we could follow him. ”

The Captain scowled at this, “No. If the Mandos are being this careful, then he’s probably jumping to some intermediate location where he can transition to another quick jump to his final destination. They could even do that two or three times to really throw off pursuit, if they have the fuel for it. If we want information, we are going to have to get them before this jump Elsewise, we’re going to have to start looking for him all over again.”

The commander spoke up, “It’s not exactly a difficult ship to find, is it??”

“I am sure they only use it for large cargo runs,” The Captain remarked with that patented naval derision. “Lieutenant, when I need something stormed I will defer to your experience, but do not try to tell me how to fly my ship.” The Captain turned to the small holo-display to his right, “Serpent, Berserker, this is the Bulwark. Stand by to enter the system on my order, we are moving to engage the target.”

He motioned to the helm, and the ship began a ponderously slow turn towards the Mandalorian craft. They were still too close to the planet, with too much junk floating about, for a safe transition to hyperspace. Another gesture and the comms officer began speaking, “Unidentified Mandalorian Transport, this is the Bulwark of the Seventh Fleet. You have been selected for an inspection. Power down your engines and prepare to be boarded.”

As the message went out two things happened simultaneously. The Mandalorian ship’s engines flared to full power, and the Captain launched the Bulwark’s TIE fighters. Two watched through the window as the dozen fighters bore down on the single transport. The TIEs were faster than the transport, and he was forced to evade rather than make the jump into hyperspace. The Captain huffed as the Mandalorian’s guns took out one of the fighters. It wasn’t surprising that even with a speed and maneuverability disadvantage he was still able to put up a fight. Most ships had a speed and maneuverability disadvantage against TIE fighters. Unfortunately, they tended to have every other advantage, and this Mandalorian was using those to great effect.

“Time to intercept?” the Captain asked.

“Two minutes, sir,” came the response from the helm.

“Sir, I’m getting a communication from the planet. They are requesting us to identify ourselves or they will send fighters.”

The Captain turned to the commander, who was also the mission specialist, “Lieutenant, what do we know about this planet?”

“It’s nominally New Republic sir, but effectively independent. No permanent garrison, no planetary fortifications. Only a small anti-pirate force. Perhaps a few corvettes and a dozen fighters.”

The Captain nodded, “Comms, ignore the request. By the time they get out here, we will be done.”

He turned back to the fight to see the Mandalorian take another of their fighters, “How long until we can get a tractor-beam on them?”

“Another minute or so, sir. He’s still gaining some distance from us, the fighter squadron can’t keep him penned in. At this rate, he might be able to make a hyperspace jump before we can reach him.

A sneer twisted the Captain’s lips. This possibility had been planned for, but the Captain clearly preferred to act alone, “Very well, tell the Serpent to intercept.”

The order went out, and a moment later the Serpent jumped into the system in front of the Mandalorian, cutting off that avenue of escape. It’s own fighters launched in support of the Bulwark’s squadron, but the TIE’s light weapons seemed to provide little more than an annoyance to the heavily armored Mandalorian ship. The Serpent’s battery was a different matter, however, and the Mandalorian had to change course to prevent itself from being crippled, letting the Bulwark move in. It still cost them another TIE fighter, but soon the Mandalorian’s transport was being tractored into the hanger of the Bulwark. 

The Captain nodded to the commander, “Your turn, Lieutenant. Go welcome our prisoner.”

Two and the commander saluted crisply before the Captain turned away, his job done.

When they arrived at the hangar a few minutes later,much of it was now occupied by the large transport. The rest of the squad was already there, Two was pleased to notice, along with a dozen clones, weapons aimed at the entrance to the hanger.

Clockwork and Five looked over as they entered. Clockwork saluted before giving his report, “Sir, my men have surrounded the ship. I have two fireteams on the main hatch, and men watching all the angles in case he tries to slip out. Scanners show a single life form aboard.”

The commander nodded, “Very well. Prepare to-“

At that moment, the bottom hatch of the ship exploded open, and the lone Mandalorian dropped out. He was a large man in blue armor carrying a large repeating blaster connected to his rear-mounted power-pack. It caught everyone by surprise, and Two cursed himself for giving the Mando this opening. In a moment, two of the clones were dead and the rest were fleeing for cover. The members of Grey Squad ducked back into the hallway outside the hanger with Clockwork. Two could hear Clockwork call up more clones.

“We need him alive,” Two reminded the clone commander, “stun setting for blasters.”

Clockwork leaned into the room, firing with one of his pistols at the Mandalorian, who was using his weapon to suppress the remaining clones. The disadvantage of numbers continued to hold it’s own however, and the Mando wasn’t able to do much more than keep heads down. 

“Sir, his armor is just absorbing the stun bolts.” Clockwork reported. “My men can’t get a shot at anything that’s exposed.”

Two looked around the corner into the hangar, using his helmet’s optics to enhance the Mando. Clockwork was right, several stun bolts simply dissipated off the thick metal as the Mando continued to lay down fire, slowly making his way over to the controls.

“Shit,” Two cursed. “He’s going to the docking controls. He’s trying to release his ship.”

The commander just looked at him, “We’re in hyperspace. If he tries to exit now he’ll just end up thrown out somewhere. His ship might not even survive.”

Two shrugged, “He doesn’t know that, sir. And, if we are particularly unlucky, he could take us out with him when he does. We need to drop out of hyperspace, now.”

The commander nodded, relaying the request to the bridge. That solved the threat to the ship, but did nothing to prevent their target from escaping. Clockwork turned to the commander, “My men are trained for these situations. We can take him down, sir.”

The commander didn’t consider it for long before he nodded. Heedless of the danger, Clockwork and the clones behind him threw themselves into the room, laying down a torrent of fire, taking the initiative back from the Mandalorian. Two more of the clones fell, but Two had to admit he was impressed as he watched the clones work as a team to bring the Mandalorian down. 

It wasn’t like watching a normal unit of troopers, the clones were far more skilled than normal stormtroopers. And unlike any unit Two had ever seen, they acted as one. More like a pack of hunting animals more than a unit of people. They swarmed around the Mandalorian, presenting too many targets for the single warrior to take down. Even when he attempted to ignite his jetpack, the clones were ready, using grapnels to ensnare the warrior and force him back to the ground. The Mando took out two more clones with his flamethrower, and some wrist-mounted missile launcher played havoc with a half-dozen of the troopers, but in the end they forced him down and disarmed him.

The commander, Two, and the rest of the squad entered the hangar. Three gave a whistle modulated by her helmet and spoke openly, “Damn, sir. Why didn’t we keep these guys around?”

Five looked over, “Same reason droid armies fell out of favor. Too expensive. Plus, you gonna tell me a bunch of tube-men can outclass us?”

Two motioned for them to shut it. The medics were coming in, and Two could tell a number of the wounded weren’t going to make it. One Mandalorian had taken on nearly two dozen clones and had incapacitated nearly a quarter of them. Three were outright dead. The clones got results, but they also filled body-bags.

Clockwork came over, working his shoulder, “the Mandalorian is restrained, sirs. My men are working to disarm him now. Those buggers carry more weapons than some arms dealers. Do you want him taken to the brig?”

The commander nodded, “Yes, Captain. Take him and prep him for questioning. I want him stripped-“

Two moved up, “Sir, that might not be a good idea. He’s a hardcore fundamentalist. He will not respond well to being stripped by an enemy. He might even commit suicide before the Old- The Grand Admiral can interrogate him. I suggest we disarm him and keep him under guard until we return to the Seventh.”

The commander gave him a look of irritation, “And why didn’t you share this beforehand, Sergeant?”

Two rolled his eyes under his helm, thinking back to the briefing, “Wasn’t relevant until we saw his reaction to being captured, sir. He was willing to risk destroying his ship, and ours, for a chance to escape. That says fanatic. And even once the clones had him, he didn’t stop fighting until they physically took every weapon he had. This isn’t someone staying with the tribe for protection or because he can’t go back to Mandalore. He’s a believer.”

With a brief nod, the commander turned to Clockwork, “Very well. Captain, have your clones take him to the brig and detain him. I want guards on him the entire time, and no one besides myself is to enter until the Grand Admiral arrives, understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Clockwork said, detailing his men. From the beating he’d taken, Two had suspected the Mando was unconscious. He was surprised to see that as the clones began moving him, he still struggled for a second. It wasn’t for show either, he was clearly testing them. Even now, he was looking for them to drop their guard and provide the opportunity for escape. 

Two stepped over to Five, “You and Three set up a watch outside the brig. One of us guards him until we get back to the Old Man, understood?”

“Understood,” Five nodded. As the tech specialist for Grey Squad, he understood Two’s underlying concern. Technology, whether living or mechanical, always had flaws. 


	8. Last of his Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Bargain Struck, a Soul Betrayed

It took another day to get back to the Seventh. The Old Man had moved the _Chimaera_ and to another old depot. The Seventh was continuing to grow, and while he was still limited on destroyers, the Old Man now had a respectable fleet of smaller ships.

During that time the Captain had tried the usual techniques to encourage the Mando to talk: beatings, sleep depredation, limiting food and drink. He had laughed, literally laughed, as the clones used the shock-prods on him. Two had been present for some of the sessions. He never understood why they took this route;a Jedi and some other species would be resistant to the drugs, but this was just another human. Beskar armor or not, after hanging in a suspension field for a few hours he would talk like any other. Perhaps they didn’t have any of the interrogation drugs on board. When he had asked the Captain, the only response he got was, “Oh, we aren’t interrogating him yet, sergeant, we are simply preparing him for the Grand Admiral.”

After that, Two had left. He was a soldier, he fulfilled missions for the big picture, the need of the Empire, or, the Old Man. Actually, at this point he couldn’t remember why he had fought for the Empire, but he knew full well why the Old Man deserved his loyalty. The Empire was dead. Thrawn was just getting started.

They brought the _Bulwark_ along-side the _Chimaera_ , and Two and his team waited in the landing bay with an honor-guard of clones as the Old Man’s shuttle docked. He stepped out with his customary escort of four Death-Troopers. He barely spared a glance at the clones in their archaic armor as the Captain greeted him, and they began the walk down to the brig. There were some minor pleasantries, and Two allowed himself a small smile of approval as the two clones and Three snapped to attention as the Old Man walked up to the door. He motioned to his escorts to wait outside while he stepped inside, the Captain, Commander and rest of Grey Squad joining him. Added to the two clones already standing guard inside the room would have been crowded, but the Captain also motioned the clones out.

The Old Man looked over the captive, paying close attention to what remained of his armor, “Captain, would you explain to me why the prisoner has not been stripped of his armor?”

The Captain looked to both Two and the commander, clearly annoyed at being called out, “Sir, the special forces team thought it would be safer to allow the prisoner to retain as much of his armor as was practical. He’s from one of the radical clans that fragmented after the Purge of Mandalore-“

“Captain, I have worked with Mandalorians before. During the Lothal incident the planet was embroiled in a civil war between the legitimate government supported by the Empire and the Rebels of a half-dozen of their warrior clans led by House Kryze. Before arriving, I reviewed the historic archive files, and saw the war ended—poorly for the Rebels.”

The Captain, properly abashed, said nothing. As the only non-com who had not originally come from the Chimaera in the room, Two felt the need to speak up, “Sir, following the Purge, most of the clans were scattered. Even House Saxon was a shadow of its former self, the planet was in ruins-“

“You speak as if from experience, Sergeant?”

The Old Man was, of course, well aware of Two’s service record, and he understood that the question was asked for the benefit of the others in the room, “Yes, sir. I served during the Purge. Afterwards I transferred to this region to hunt down some of the fleeing clans. By the time the war ended, the larger remnants returned to begin rebuilding the planet. Anyone still out here is a radical. Followers of the old ways, from before the neutrality government took over.”

The old man nodded, “That is precisely why, while you were out acquiring this captive, I took the liberty to locate some specialized assistance.”

The door opened and a new figure entered. She was a woman, but what surprised Two was her armor. It had clear signs of wear and tear, but he had seen it before, on Mandalore. She was from House Saxon, wearing the specialized jet-trooper armor the House had adopted as the Empire’s regent. Unlike the Mandalorian, her face was bare, her helmet carried under her left arm, and her entrance garnered an immediate response from the prisoner.

“ _Slana'pir, chakaar aruetyc_!”

Two couldn’t understand the native Mandalorian, but the woman obviously did, “Traitor? You betrayed our world and murdered our people. You hide like sand-rats and are ashamed of looking your enemies in the eye.”

Two could tell this was going to get ugly soon, but the Old Man seemed completely unruffled as he turned to the newcomer, “This is Zenobia Saxon, one of the few remaining loyal Mandalorians. As I have been gathering agents, she and her party offered to join us.”

“I still honor the pact between House Saxon and the Empire,” The woman replied as if speaking to an assembly of Imperial Moffs. “If we have both been forced from our worlds, then it is better to fight together than die alone. House Saxon still remembers the stories of Grand Admiral Thrawn. It was not a difficult decision to join you, Grand Admiral. Allowing me this little repayment of the Wren rebels is only a bonus.”

Two made a note to keep away from this one. She was a fanatic, and fanatics were only good for getting people killed, or running into a blaster when the occasion called for it. By the time the Purge took place, most of House Saxon had been either arrested or killed on Mandalore, and the few remaining were the die-hard supporters. He wondered if there were any Mandalorians left who weren’t fanatics. Was the same true of the Empire?

The woman, Zenobia, walked to the Mando, putting her helmet down as she examined his armor. She let out a wicked laugh, “Now, this is an interesting find. Death Watch, the first traitors. How much of him do you need afterwards?”

Thrawn’s tone was dismissive, “Once you give me the location of their hiding place, he is yours. I have no need for a dangerous prisoner.” The Old Man turned to the Mandalorian, who Two suspected was glaring at Saxon from under his helmet, “However, if you were to cooperate with me right now, and simply reveal the location of your fellow Mandalorians, I would be willing to allow you to be released once my business with them is done.”

The woman let out a crackle that solidified in Two’s mind that she wasn’t all there, “He’s Death Watch, he’ll laugh all the way to the grave just to spite you.”

Thrawn addressed the blue-armored Mando directly again, “Then let me be explicit. Your group is protecting something the former Moff Gideon coveted. I need to know what it is and why. I have no conflict with you or your people, and if you give me the information I require, I am willing to end our interaction at that. I will release you, and will have no need to bother your little group. However, should you be uncooperative, I will hand you over to Ms. Saxon here to gain the information I need.”

The man remained silent. After a moment, the Old Man simply nodded, “Very well, you have made your choice. Ms. Saxon, he is yours to deal with as you see fit.” He stood back, giving the woman more room. Two noticed the rest of the Squad had all moved to the opposite side of the room, as if wary of what the two Mandalorians would do.

The Saxon walked to stand directly before the Mandalorian, looking over him before tapping a finger on his helmet, “Well now. First things first, I think we need to learn who you are. You don’t happen to believe those old superstitions about revealing your face to the enemy, do you?” Reaching forward, she flipped a catch under the earpiece of the helmet, and the Mandalorian tried to jerk back from her grip. “I feel it’s a bit one sided, having a conversation without seeing your face.” 

There was a hiss of pressure being released and she pulled the blue helmet from the man’s headThere was a hiss of pressure being released and she pulled the blue helmet from the man’s head, revealing a surprisingly thin, angular face underneath.

“ _Hu’tuun!_ ” The man shouted, his voice sounding a bit more refined and far less threatening without the modulation of his helmet.

The woman stood back and smiled, “Well well well, isn’t this a happy reunion.” She gestured to the assembled group standing at the back of the room, “Gentlemen, we are in the presence of royalty. This is Paz Vizsla, lost scion of House Vizsla, perhaps last of his line.” She turned her attention back to the unmasked man, “I thought your clan was eliminated during the Purge. Well, nothing to do about it now but finish the job, can’t be many of you left in this sector.” She paused, strutting around him like a predator toying with it’s next meal, “Of course, why kill the body when you can crush the spirit. How about a little game. I’ll step outside, and you tell the Admiral what he wants to know. If you don’t, I’ll find whatever remains of your clan and exterminate them like the vermin they are. What’s more important to you, your Vizsla honor or their lives?”

Taking off the man’s helm had done something to him. Now that Two could see the fire in his eyes, it was different then he expected. There was hatred there, but there was hollow quality to the emotions, as if by taking off the helmet something had been lost. He looked straight ahead, waiting for death. This was exactly what Two had feared would happen, and why he had recommended they not do exactly this, but perhaps the Saxon knew something he did not. She turned and sauntered from the room, leaving the rest of them alone with the silent prisoner.

“Now, why don’t we move past all this unpleasantness and you just give me a location?” the Old Man inquired, stepping forward into the space Saxon had left behind.

The prisoner turned to look at Thrawn, “It won’t change anything. If I tell you, you will tell her. I am already dead, there isn’t anything else you can do to me.” The resignation and defeat was clear on his face, as if he had been wearing that helmet for so long that he could not control his features without it or had forgotten how to.

The Old Man walked closer, “Oh no. See, that is where you are wrong. Of course, your ship’s logs were wiped before we captured you, but there was some very unique residue on your hull and in your bay. Soil and bacteria unique to only a few planets. I will find what I want, and if you do not cooperate, I will ensure you live to see the Saxons take their revenge. There is no need to make this personal. I have no love for the Saxon brute. I am happy to give her nothing, as long as I get what I need.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because we both know what she will do if you don’t. The war is over, I have neither the time nor the resources to indulge Saxon’s petty desire for revenge if I can avoid it. You might feel you have no guarantee of what the outcome of my encounter with your group will be, but we both know the outcome of her encounter. You have nothing to lose.”

The man shifted his gaze away from the Old Man, and Two could see the walls crumbling. He was defeated, and all that was left for him was to decide how to die: alone, watching Saxon kill what remained of his people, or to take the gamble on the Old Man.

“Your word,” he said at last. 

The Old Man looked surprised, “My word?”

“That you will turn the Saxons away, and share nothing with them. If you try to hunt us using the Saxons, my covert will flee before she can find them. And if by chance she manages to catch them before they can flee, she will kill everyone, including the one you are seeking.”

That got his attention, “If you are willing to cooperate, not only would I find some convenient task requiring Ms. Saxon’s unique skills, but I would be willing to return you to your people-“

“No. I won’t go back and I won’t lead you to them. Get rid of the Saxon woman, and I'll tell you what Gideon was after.”

“Is that your only demand?”

“One more thing.”

“Yes?”

The Mandalorians eyes went cold, “You kill me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man'doa Translations:  
> Slana'pir, chakaar aruetyc - get out, traitorous lowlife  
> Hu’tuun! - Coward


	9. He Doesn’t Get Your Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Expanding the Fleet, Cutting out the Rot

Two had watched executions, and he’d seen men and women die in battle. He’d been the one pointing the blaster in both cases enough times to know the difference. When the Mandalorian died, it was neither; it was a mercy. The Old Man, true to his word, did it himself. 

Unfortunately, the news that Gideon had apparently been on a sector-wide search for a child of an unknown species with magical powers was not the breakthrough they had expected. Everyone aside from Three had realized immediately these “magical powers” were clearly the Force. Of course, the Mando, a barbarian to the end, had no idea what a Jedi was. A warrior culture developed to fight the Jedi, and this band of savages had been driven so low that they had forgotten their mortal enemy. The Old Man had done everyone a favor by putting that old horse out to pasture.

So they knew Gideon was after a Force user. They still didn’t know why Gideon was after a force user. And that meant that their mission still revolved around finding this child themselves. It turned out they would have to find this child regardless. 

The Mandalorians were hiding on a planet a few hours away by hyperspace, but there was one minor issue: it was one of four systems claimed by yet another Warlord, Governor Azaleus. The Old Man had decided that instead of trying to sneak in, this would be a good opportunity to muster some more support. He had sent the Bulwark, it’s escorts, and Saxon’s ships to the planet with instructions to negotiate the Governor’s support for the Seventh, or remove him.

Two, on the bridge with the commander and the Captain, got his first glimpse of the planet as their small fleet exited hyperspace. From what he was visible from the atmosphere, the planet had seen better days. There was a single star destroyer in orbit with a few support ships, mostly arquatans or dreadnought class vessels. Enough to chase off their little flotilla, but not enough to pose any real threat to the ever-growing Seventh. As they approached, the destroyer sent out a challenge.

“Comms, send a response that we are an escort for the emissary of Grand Admiral Thrawn of the Seventh Fleet. We require an audience with the Governor at his earliest convenience,” the Captain replied.

A few tense minutes passed before the destroyer sent a reply, “Sir, we have clearance for a parking orbit. The Governor invites the Admiral’s emissary to dinner in two hours, if that is acceptable.”

The Captain nodded, “Very well. Put us into orbit and return an affirmative.” He turned to the commander, “Lieutenant, your team will serve as escort for the emissary.”

“Of course, sir,” the commander gave the Captain a sharp salute before he and Two exited the bridge. As they moved out, the commander turned to Two, “Sergeant, prep the squad,.I want them in the hanger in one hour. I suspect our emissary will want to arrive early…”

“Yes, sir,” Two agreed before heading to the locker room.

*  *  *  *  *

“The Old Man is sending the Mandalorian down as an emissary?” Three asked once Two finished the mission brief.

“She is technically related to a former Imperial Governor. That makes her qualified. The Old Man wants us there as escorts to make it clear that she works for him.”

“Do we expect trouble?” Four asked.

“We are going with a Mandalorian supercommando on a diplomatic mission. I’ll be surprised if any of us come back with any ammo left,” Five retorted.

“Keep that kind of thinking to yourself, Five,” Two responded in a level tone. “The Old Man wants to take these assets whole if possible. If there is fighting, we will not be starting it. Is that clear?”

“Yessir,” they all replied.

“What kind of forces would we be looking at?” Five asked. “If things should happen to go wrong, sir.”

Two gave him a short glance to let him know his retreat was accepted, barely, “Well, there are the ships in orbit, likely a legion or two of troopers, probably less given how long he’s been out here. The Captain did some quick passive scans, most of their kit needs an overhaul. Probably only about 50% effective. The destroyer could still put a world of hurt on us if it wanted to, however.”

“So expect more sloppy, half-trained or too-old troopers with blasters even shittier than the normal kit?”

Two just shrugged, “Even that shit will kill you if it hits. Meet up in the hanger in half an hour.”

As he walked out, Threejogged over to him, “Sir, if you have a minute?”

“What is it ,Three?”

“Oh, you can call me-“

He cut her off, “No. Listen, Three, I’ve seen your record, I know what your name is. Do you know why we don’t use names, even among the squad?”

“Protocol, sir?”

“No. Because your name is yours. When we are working, we belong to the Old Man. He owns our loyalty, our skills, and if need be our lives. But he doesn’t get your name, Three. That you get to keep. Never give that up to anyone.”

“But you already know it, there isn’t any operational security to maintain here-“ Two stoped her and turned to look directly at her, ignoring the passing crew they were now disrupting.

“Three, look you’re new right? Take it from me, and from Four and Five; the Empire uses us. Even the Old Man uses us. He sees a picture so big we can’t even imagine it, and in that big picture people like us sometimes have to die. But what makes us different from the Stormtroopers or some damn-“ He paused as a pair of clones passed by on patrol, “some damn clone, is that after this, we get to have something to go home to. Your name is part of that. While you’re here, while you serve under me, you don't have a name, because the Empire doesn’t get that. Understand?”

From her expression it was clear she didn’t, but that didn’t change her response, “Yes, sir. All business from now on, sir!”

He smiled, “Good. Now, did you have a question, soldier?”

She paused, “Honestly sir, wasn’t important. See you on the shuttle.”

*  *  *  *  *

It was a smooth ride down, and when the five of them exited their shuttle, freshly painted and cleaned up as was appropriate from an official escort, the Saxon woman had brought along two of her own people, all in their bastardized Mandalorian armor. Ironically, this gave the commander, with his rank markings, the appearance of being in charge, but as the confused Governor looked between them, Saxon made it clear who he needed to talk to.

Taking off her helmet, she stepped up to the governor, “Governor Azaleus, I am Zenobia Saxon, emissary for Grand Admiral Thrawn. The Admiral would like to pass on his appreciation for your continued loyalty in these trying times.”

As Two looked around the worn-down Imperial compound, and the clearly impoverished city beyond, he wasn’t sure ‘congratulations’ was the right word.

“Yes, Ms Saxon. Welcome to Domwei. Of course, I had heard the rumors of the Grand Admiral’s return... and how he addressed the actions of Moff Gideon. Needless to say, my planet is very interested in joining the right side.”

Saxon let a small smile cross her lips as she and the rest of them turned to walk into the compound. As they exchanged pleasantries, Two looked around the compound. There were about a dozen stormtroopers, most in clean armor with standard weapons, but a few were clearly in gear that needed a good cleaning and some repairs. This either meant the discipline amongst the troopers was lax, or that the governor didn’t have enough men to provide a full honor guard without pulling from his outer garrison troops. Two suspected it was a little of both as they entered the building and were led to a large banquet hall.

Grey Squad fanned out around the room while Saxon’s two bodyguards followed their mistress. There were about a dozen stormtroopers throughout the room, and perhaps a dozen toadies at the table with the Governor and Saxon. Two didn’t pay too much attention to the conversation, instead focusing on the stormtroopers. More gathered as the dinner went on. Keeping his voice low, he relayed this to the commander and rest of the squad.

The status que only lasted about forty minutes, barely enough time for their meal to arrive before Two overhead the governor and Saxon’s voices growing louder before the commander’s voice came over his comms, “Grey One, things are turning ugly, be ready for-“

He didn’t have time to finish his warning before a single blaster bolt impaled the governor in the stomach from under the table. Not waiting for another signal, Grey Squad and the two bodyguards acted almost as if this had been the plan all along. The stormtroopers were still registering that their charge was dead when they all opened fire, taking out another seven before the remaining guards began stumbling for their weapons. It took just a few more seconds for the room to be clear of threats. The Governor’s toadies had fled with the one or two stormtroopers smart enough to run, and the eight of them were alone in the large dining hall. 

Five and one of the bodyguards took grazing shots, their armor taking the worst of it, and as Four attended them, Two motioned for the rest of the Squad to secure the room while the commander marched up to Saxon, “Just what in the hells was that?”

“It became clear that the good governor had no intention of joining the Grand Admiral’s cause,” she said, taking a bit from some hors d'oeuvre that had somehow escaped the firefight. “He thought he had a superior bargaining position by owning this planet. I made the decision that a change in leadership was in order.”

The commander just stared at her as the sounds of more stormtroopers could be heard from one of the halls . “And what now? That destroyer is still in orbit. t will destroy both our ships, thanks to you.”

The woman looked unconcerned, picking over one of the desert trays for a particular pastry, “Oh, don’t worry about that, lieutenant. It was all taken care of. I notified the Grand Admiral half an hour ago. He signaled his fleet entering the system right before I shot that annoying little man.”

The commander was clearly livid, but knew better than to make a fight of it now, “Alright, then what about us?”

“I was told your squad is exceptional at thinking on their feet. I have full faith you can keep up,” she said before drawing one of her pistols and activating her jetpack. Blowing out one of the windows, she and her two bodyguards exited through the window

The commander gave a slight shake of his head before transmitting instructions to the rest of the squad to follow her. All five of them activated their own jetpacks and flew through Saxon’s improvised door.

The commander immediately signaled the Bulwark requesting a status update. Two allowed himself a small smile at the reply, “Lieutenant, the Seventh fleet dropped out of hyperspace about five minutes ago. The planetary fleet surrendered with barely a fight, something about not wanting to face the Grand Admiral…”

“Understood, we are moving with Saxon to extract. What is the status-” He was cut off as blaster fire tore past the eight of them. It seems the compound’s guards had not been part of the Old Man’s surrender. In fact, from the slight blue haze Two could tell that someone had raised the planetary shield. They weren’t going anywhere until that was down.

Saxon did not appear to have realized this yet, and was still making a beeline for her shuttle. Two could already tell that she had let herself be overcome by the bloodlust of the fighting. She and her bodyguards were barreling ahead, heedless of the incoming fire, blasting left and right as the hapless guards tried, to admittedly little effect, to mount a defense of their dead leader.

“Take cover, turrets!” Three’s voice came over the comms, and Two saw the turbolaser pivoting towards them. It’s operator didn’t seem sure whether to shoot them or their shuttles. Not that it mattered, the turbolaser was in an armored turret made to withstand fighter-level weaponry, at least for a few glancing hits. Their blasters wouldn’t even scratch it. But Saxon apparently had a different idea.

She and her two guards altered their flight straight towards the turret, which was apparently all the motivation the operator needed to pick a target. Blasts set for proximity decay shot around her, taking out one of her escorts but generally missing the Mandalorians by a wide margin. As she closed in, both Saxon and her remaining escort did a quick maneuver, and Two saw two missiles released from the packs. A few seconds later and the turbolaser was gone.

All that meant was that both shuttles were now targets. Saxon’s ship took off under heavy fire, it’s armor allowing it a clear take off without the heavy turret as a threat, but with the planetary shield in place, they had nowhere to run. Their own shuttle was trapped on the dock, the pilot having exited and been captured. Even if Saxon got to her ship, they had no way off the planet. It was obvious the commander had also realized this, as Two overheard the brief discussion between him and the Captain in orbit.

“Understood, sir. We will move in and destroy the capital’s shield generator.” He switched his tone from receiving to giving orders, “Alright, Grey Squad, new objective. Saxon is on her own. We are to divert to the planetary shield control and disable it. Once the shield is down, the Grand Admiral will extract us.”

No one even questioned leaving the psychopath behind. Five did ask the obvious however, “Sir, we don’t have any heavy ordinance. How do you expect us to take down the shield?”

“Improvise, soldier,” the commander responded.


	10. The Plan Has Changed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Distracting the enemy, Removing the rival

One advantage of Saxon’s stunt was that it did pull most of the remaining security towards the shuttles, and away from the rest of the building. Afterall, with the shield up, no one could land troops on the planet. It would take some poor writing on behalf of the Gods to let a ship slip through the microsecond refresh rate of a planetary shield. Fortunately, the Old Man already had everyone on the planet he needed.

Like all Imperial complexes, everything vital to controlling the planet was centralized in one location. While that made the entire thing a single point of failure, it also meant that, in theory, to control the planet you only had to control the one location. The Civil War had shown the grand flaws of that strategy, and now Two was grateful he had never been assigned garrison duty.

The planetary shield had its own dedicated reactor, but the squad lacked the firepower to do anything to permanently disable it. Instead the commander split the squad in two. He and Five would go to the control room to manually deactivate the shield. Two, Three, and Four were responsible for taking out anyone else who might have the authority to turn it back on.

The three of them were currently pinned down by a team of stormtroopers who had come equipped with light repeaters. As it turned out, the remaining leadership was very interested in keeping their options open. 

"Fifty percent effective, you said," Three complained as she took out another trooper between them and their target. "This is the fourth repeater position. What exactly did they degrade from?"

"I saw some walkers rusting in one of the garages. Would you prefer we be dealing with those?" Four replied, laying down suppressive fire from her carbine.

Two decided that the chatter, while against protocol, was harmless in this case as he dived forward to new cover, blasting another trooper.

Overhearing the commander on his secondary channel, it sounded like the other team was making better progress, "Two, One: status?"

He grimaced, ducking behind cover to have one fewer lethal distraction, "Ran into another roadblock, sir. I think they pulled all their troops to guard the remaining leadership."

"Not quite all of them," One replied, and Two heard the sound of blaster fire through his comm.

Two held back his response as Three had finally edged close enough to toss a grenade. In the ensuing chaos, the three of them were up and running towards the conference room the remaining leadership was waiting in. Conveniently for Three, the remaining guards had all taken a compact defensive position in front of the door. 

The complex’s rapidly diminishing garrison a few troopers smaller, they were through the door. The four guards inside, private bodyguards more for show than actual protection, took only a moment to remove. That left the three members of Grey Squad alone with the five very concerned former Imperials.

Two switched to his external broadcaster, "Alright. As of now, this planet is under the control of the Seventh Fleet. In a few moments your planetary shield is going to deactivate. The smart move would be for you all to surrender right now."

The most senior, or perhaps least shell shocked, of the surviving leadership looked directly to Two. She made to approach before Three intercepted her, blaster leveled directly at her forehead. To her credit, she only paused for a moment before she looked back at Two, "I am willing to negotiate terms for our surrender."

"Unconditional," Two cut her off.

She opened her mouth to protest before Two continued, "The simple truth is the Grand Admiral has control of your ships, and in a moment your shield will be down. Your options are to stand down or be put down."

The woman stared at him, and Two was beginning to think they would have to shoot one of them to convince the rest they were serious when a loud crash at the far end of the room drew everyone’s attention. Like every proper Imperial conference room, there was a large window of tinted glass that let in just enough light to keep the place in perpetual gloom. This feature was violently shattered as the majority of a TIE fighter careened through it, a familiar figure following it by jetpack.

The TIE impacted in the middle of the room, killing two of the rapidly shrinking Domwei leadership council. Another pair of the stormtroopers burst in, only to stare from the destroyed TIE fighter to the gathered group and Grey Squad. Perhaps they weren't sure which represented the more immediate threat. To be honest, Two was starting to have some questions himself.

Everyone remained transfixed on the destroyed ship long enough for Zenobia to launch herself off the back and jump down onto the floor between the three soldiers of Grey Squad and the woman and her two stormtroopers. Upon landing, Zenobia dismissively shot both stormtroopers as they slowly registered that she was the threat and raised their blasters. Once again, the room was secured; that or they were all now stuck in here with a madwomen. Two did notice that her remaining guard appeared either to have been killed or had decided not to join her for her very personal downing of an Imperial fighter. 

“Sergeant,” Zenobia turned to Two, her tone giving no importance to the events of the last thirty seconds, “where is your commander, and where are the reinforcements from the Grand Admiral?” The Domwei woman and the two remaining stooges had gathered together, apparently deciding at this point that gathering together provided less odds of getting killed by whatever spaceship was next to crash into the room.

Two cut off his initial response, wondering if her ride on a TIE had done more damage, or if her natural thickness was why she was still standing, “The planetary shield is still up, Lady Saxon. Until-”

He was interrupted by the commander’s voice on the squad channel, “Grey Squad, the shield is coming down now.”

Zenobia tilted her helmet at his silence, apparently unused to not being involved in every part of any conversation that was important to her. Two continued, “My commander has just reached the control room. The shield should be down momentarily. I was just securing the surrender of the remaining planetary government leaders.”

She turned, as if only now noticing the three people she had not managed to kill standing behind her. With a shrug, she holstered her pistols and turned to give the Domwei woman a casual once over, “Well, don’t let me stop you.”

The woman seemed shocked into silence, and Saxon inclined her head curiously and waited, her hand resting lightly on her weapons. Two wondered if over the centuries the Mandalorians had developed an entire language of head inclination. Eventually, the woman got the message, “Yes… we were just about to begin negotiating terms for Domwei to pledge our support to the Grand Admiral.”

Zenobia turned, taking off her helmet as her face showed a predatory smile at the poor woman, “Well then, I’m the person you should be talking to. Let us discuss my terms and your concessions, shall we?” 

The two began a discussion that consisted mainly of Saxon listing off her demands, in Thrawn’s name of course. A few minutes into the mostly one-sided discussion, the commander sent a private transmission to Two.

“New orders, the Grand Admiral is sending down an extraction shuttle now. Rendezvous at the coordinates I’m sending. We’re pulling out.”

Two noticed that, as Zenobia was eagerly discussing concessions for herself as the official representative of the Grand Admiral, she had apparently not received the message about extracting, “Are we extracting with the Mandalorian?”

“Orders were for our squad to pull out. We are not to take anyone with us. Apparently the plan has changed.”

Two understood what that meant. The Old Man had found a way to keep Saxon’s supercommandos without needing to keep her. He used a hand motion to inform Three and Four to move out, and sent the coordinates for the exfil point to both of their helm displays. The three of them almost made it through the door before one of the stooges noticed and alerted everyone else. Zenobia turned to Two, “Sergeant, what is the meaning of this? I have not finished my negotiations.”

“We have new orders, ma’am.”

She scoffed, “I don’t care what your lieutenant thinks. I am the Grand Admiral’s representative here. To you, my word is his, and I. Am. Not. Done.” The last four words were spaced out for emphasis.

Two was now very glad that his helmet covered his expression, “I understand, ma’am, but I have new orders from the Grand Admiral. We are pulling out.”

If nothing else, Two respected that nothing in her reaction implied that this was anything but expected news to her, “Very well, sergeant. Escort me to the shuttle then. These negotiations can continue at a time and place of the Grand Admiral’s choosing.”

Two noticed Three and Four both tensing as he turned to face the Mandalorian, “Actually, ma’am, I believe the Grand Admiral has separate transportation for you. We are returning to the  _ Bulwark _ .”

This got the slightest of twitches from her. So some Mandalorians did have something resembling a poker face, it seemed, “Excuse me?”

Two was about to respond when the Domewei woman, in an act of either bravery or stupidity that was impressive regardless, pulled a pathetically small blaster from somewhere and pointed it directly at Saxon’s head, “You there, stop. Before anyone leaves, we are coming to some agreement on how we are going to be treated moving forward.”

Two, who had received a little more information from the commander, motioned to Three and Four to stand down, “Sorry, you’re talking to the wrong people for that. Apparently there’s a New Republic task force en-route to this system. Something about an opportunity to liberate this planet during a bungled coup attempt by the local elites. Killed the governor and nicked the protecting fleet. You’re going to be wanting to talk to them, not us.”

Two was sure both women forgot they were literally trying to kill each other as they bonded for a moment in their mutual shock over this. In fact, including Three and Four, Two figured this was the single largest crowd of women he had ever stunned into silence. Zenobia broke it, “What?”

Two once again quietly motioned Three and Four to get out, “There is a New Republic battlefleet about thirty minutes from this planet. You’ll have droppers landing in about thirty two minutes. It's quite unfortunate that you disabled the shield in the failed coup.”

The woman, apparently remembering her gun, settled her aim back on Zenobia’s face. Her voice was in that half-crazed half angered of Imperial nobles across the galaxy, “Well then take me with you. If you don’t, I’ll kill your leader. Let me come with you unless you want me to-”

“Go ahead, she’s not my commander,” Two replied.

“Excuse me?” Zenobia said, just as Two turned his back on her. 

The sound of a single blaster shot rang out, and the thump of the body that dropped was far heavier than that of the government official. Two wasn’t surprised. The only goal of the Domwei woman had been her own survival, and the moment Two had made it clear that Zenobia couldn’t be used as a ticket off this rock, she became just another threat to be removed. He was glad he wouldn’t have to deal with her; Zenobia was an easy threat compared to a woman like that, but she was the New Republic’s problem now. Two figured she would either be in jail or running the planet within a month.

The three members of Grey Squad used their jetpacks to reach the exfil coordinates, where another shuttle had landed, and within a minute were heading back into orbit. Most of the fleet had already disengaged and as soon as their shuttle was onboard, Two felt the Bulwark transition into hyperspace.

The squad had made it back to their barracks when Three finally broke the silence, “Sarge, what the actual fuck was that?”

Two shrugged, “Like I said, the Old Man sees a bigger picture then we do. Maybe he wanted to make sure the New Republic would be occupied so we could move freely for a while. Or maybe he didn’t want to raise their suspicions when word got back of an Imperial fleet conquering a planet...”

Four broke in, “Maybe he just saw an opportunity to kill off the Saxon bitch and take her supercommandos for himself.”

Pulling his helmet off, Two gave her a blank stare, “And maybe we should not be second guessing orders?”

Her helmet removed as well, Four reddened, realizing the threat for what it was, “Never, sir.”

Three interjected in an attempt to defuse the situation, “Well regardless, Sarge, the Saxon woman did teach me one thing.”

Two decided to humor her, “And what would that be?”

“Why a Mandalorian really shouldn’t take off their helm!”


	11. Target Practice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Repeating the Past, Watching Them Die

The New Republic arrived just as predicted after the  _ Bulwark  _ departed the system. By the time they reached the planet’s surface, they found no government, a half-starving population, and nothing in orbit or on the ground to protect the millions of defenseless civilians that were the newest liberated citizens of the latest galactic government. Even if it had not been Thrawn’s original plan, and Two suspected it had been, the only remaining actor in the sector with the ships and firepower to get in their way was now safely out of the picture for at least the next several weeks.

That just left the Mandalorians. The  _ Bulwark _ had been sent in alone to find the covert and extract the information Thrawn needed. The Old Man had been adamant that sending any larger portion of the fleet would result in the Mandos detecting them and fleeing long before they could be locked down.. Even if they managed to catch a few, the rest would scatter across the rim, and the Old Man didn’t want to risk the youngling being amongst the escapees.

One ship was suspicious, but wouldn’t send them running across the stars just yet. Afterall, Domwei had likely occasionally sent a lone cruiser through the system on patrols, one not unlike the  _ Bulwark _ . By the time the Mandalorians realized they weren't just swinging through the system on patrol, they would already be in orbit and ready to start the conversation on the Seventh’s terms. 

Two stood at his customary position on the bridge behind the commander and the Captain. They had exited hyperspace far from the planet to better convince the Mandalorians that they were just another patrol. While the  _ Bulwark _ performed a rapid turn to put them in orbit of the planet, the Captain had been sending out fighter patrols that now formed a mini-blockade of the planet. Scans performed by the patrols had turned up the tell-tale power-signature of a Mandalorian covert. The planet was uninhabited, so they didn’t have any bounty hunters to hide behind here.

Two had been tempted to ask how they could hope to hold the entire planet under their control with a single light cruiser, but he could already imagine the Captain’s sneer of dismissal, and kept his mouth shut. He didn’t ask the Captain for advice on how to take down a well-guarded target, he certainly wouldn’t proffer advice on how to blockade a planet.

“Sir, I pulled the old records on this planet,” one of the junior officers on the bridge walked up with a pad, “It was never colonized, but was an outpost from the Clone Wars.”

“Another old Republic base?” the commander asked.

“No sir, CIS. Got cleaned out shortly after the war when the Empire swept up the droid armies. Looks like it was some old depot.”

The Captain opened his holo-display, bringing up the map. The  _ Bulwark _ would be over the base in a few minutes. “Very good, prepare batteries to open fire. Signal the  _ Serpent  _ and  _ Berserker  _ to exit hyperspace and join formation in support.”

As the crew went about carrying out his orders, the commander looked briefly to Two before speaking up, “With all due respect, Sir, our orders are to acquire the child alive.”

The Captain did not even turn to look at them, “I am well aware of my orders, Lieutenant. A short bombardment shouldn’t damage the base, but will send a message. You will agree that if we can avoid an infantry fight with the Mandalorians, we should, yes?”

“Yes, sir,” the commander replied, sufficiently chastened by the exchange.

“In position to fire now, sir,” the weapon’s officer signaled.

“Then commence bombardment. Give them a single salvo; I want to wake them up, but not cause any significant damage.”

“Firing.” Two felt the gentle tremor of the turbolasers firing under them. Beyond the viewing port, the green streaks raced towards the surface before disappearing beneath the clouds. None of the three ships had the firepower to do real damage to a planet, but perhaps the Mandos didn’t know that.

A minute later the Captain nodded to the communications officer, who opened a general channel that the Mandalorians were guaranteed to be keeping aware of, “Mandalorian Covert, this is Captain Seer of the Imperial Cruiser  _ Bulwark _ of the Seventh Fleet. You are harboring an alien child connected to the criminal, former-ISB Agent Gideon. If you are willing to allow us to investigate his connections, we are willing to depart without further conflict with your people. Resistance would be unwise.”

They all waited a few minutes in silence. When it became clear the Mandalorians were playing dumb, the Captain gestured for the channel to be opened again, “Let me make this clear, Mandalorians, we know you are down there. There is no need for this to become violent. I am willing to negotiate for controlled access to the child.”

As the silence continued, the captain switched the communications to an internal channel, “Hanger bay, are the bombers ready?”

“Yes, sir,” came the prompt reply.

The Captain returned to the open channel, “As you do not appear willing to negotiate, we will settle this the traditional way. I repeat that any resistance will be met with lethal force. Stand down, let my people do their jobs, and neither side needs to get hurt.” He cut the comms channel and turned to the commander, “Take a company of the clones down there and find that child. You will have the bombers for close air support.”

The commander saluted in response and turned to leave. As he left the bridge, the Captain gave him a parting gift, “Oh and commander; remember, our orders are to take the child alive.”

* * * * *

The  _ Bulwark _ did not have enough shuttles on board to transport both Grey Squad and the hundred and fifty clones of one of their companies, nearly half their fit fighting strength, down in one go. Neither of the Arcquatans carried small ships suitable for landing, so Clockwork and Two worked a phased landing approach. Their three landing shuttles brought clones down first to secure a LZ a kilometer from the old base with the bombers in support. Grey Squad arrived last.

Two stepped into the fresh air of the forested planet. Scraggly trees with rocky soil, little undergrowth, and plenty of rocks made the landscape a maze of wood and stone. The perfect terrain for ambushes. Two knew that, for now, they might be the attackers but they were not the hunters here. Even the reassuring whine of the TIEs overhead did little to brighten his mood. Given how they operated, there weren't likely that many Mandalorians, and unlike either the droids and clones who had last fought over this place, the new occupants weren’t likely to line up in neat rows to let their bombers blast them from the sky.

Clockwork had remained in orbit on the  _ Bulwark _ , so one of the junor clone officers, a Clone Captain CT-39845, or “Maid” to his men, was the highest ranking clone with them. As they exited the shuttle, he was waiting at the bottom of their shuttle ramp with a report, “Sir, we’ve set up a perimeter about one hundred meters in every direction, and I have two squads approaching the old clanker base now. No signs of any hostiles yet.”

The commander nodded, “Understood, Captain. I’m going to have the shuttles return to orbit; if we have to pull out there aren’t enough seats anyway and I don’t want to split up the force. Take the entire company and advance towards the Mandalorians, but keep a strong guard on our flanks.”

“Understood, sir. Do we know the enemy’s strength?”

The commander inclined his head to Four, who spoke up, “From the cargo that Mando was carrying back when we captured him, there can’t be more than two dozen people here. It’s possible they are low on supplies and have wounded, and we know they are harboring children, so perhaps only ten or so hostiles.” Two hoped the clone didn’t notice the cold note in her voice, he briefly wondered if he was used to it enough to simply block it out.

The clone nodded, “If it’s that few we could probably hit them right now, sir.”

The commander turned to Two, “Sergeant, you’re the only one to fight Mandalorians before. How would you assess the balance of forces?”

Two shrugged, “They’ve had months, maybe more to prepare this position, and they are fighting to protect their own. They know the planet, we don’t. I’d say we’ll be alright if we can use the bombers.”

The clone didn’t quite seem to follow, “We have them ten to one, sir.”

Two smiled grimly, “You know what Mandalorians of the Watch call ten to one odds?” Without waiting for a response, he began walking towards the covert, “Target practice. We’re just giving them more options to kill.”

The clones close enough to hear noticeably slowed looking at the special forces soldier as he continued his slow march from the LZ. Two could tell at least some of them didn’t believe him, he hoped they were fast learners. They all advanced in silence for a minute before Maid turned to them, “Sir, the advance squads just reached the compound.”

“And?” The commander responded without breaking stride.

“Nothing yet, sir, but…” As he stopped, Two heard the distant sound of an explosion. Sound traveled in the cool mountain air, and the short fury of blasters followed before silence fell again and Maid continued tersely, “The squad’s gone silent. First and second platoon, vanguard position now. Third platoon, rear-guard, fourth platoon, mobile reserve. Our brothers need our help, move it soldiers!”

The clones started forward, but Two commed to the commander, “No, we need to hold back and form defensive lines now. Sir, have the bombers hit the entrance.”

Luckily, the commander and clones didn’t argue. The commander knew to follow Two’s lead here, and the clones were well-programmed to follow orders. Two continued, “Once the bombers hit the building, have the first platoon move in. Keep another flight of bombers ready, and have second and third platoons guard our flanks.”

“Understood. Move it people!” Maid replied, relaying Two’s orders. A minute later, two TIE’s streaked in low overhead, dropping a pair of proton bombs into the entrance of the depot. Two was still too far out to see it, but he heard the explosion and saw the resulting cloud of dirt rising from the entrance. The echoes of blaster fire could be heard, but it wasn’t from the depot.

“Contact left, I have two-”

“Rink is down, I need backup over here-”

“Three contacts overhead, they are using jetpacks!”

“This is Helo Squad, we are three men down and need backup!”

Two briefly took off his helmet, remembering Pantora, remembering Mandalore. The Purge had started like this, with infantry attacks. At that point it had been “Operation Warrior,” a standard reprisal invasion. He took a deep breath, smelling the unfiltered air before putting his helm back on. After Pantora, after what these people had done, a purge would be too kind. It was the only option left now just as it had been then. He replaced his helm, ignoring the stare from Three. The fighting had been far enough off that it was a small risk, but the sound of blasters was getting closer to their rear position. 

Two turned to the commander, “Call in the remaining bombers, now. Danger close They are trying to spread out your units, use the bombs to cage them in. Isolate them and take them out one at a time!”

The commander relayed his messages and the music of the bomber’s twin engines was quickly filling the air. He knew some of the clone would likely be casualties of friendly fire, but at this point they were already as good as dead. It would be their honor to take out some Mandalorians with them. Unfortunately, it turns out even these fanatics could learn. After the first pass, Three pointed out three figures rising above the trees with their blasted backpacks. Two saw the tell-tale ducking of their heads too late to do anything. The next wave of bombers were too slow to do anything but fire a few ineffective shots from their guns before the missiles tore them to pieces. They had more than enough clones to afford losing some to attrition, but not bombers.

The commander and Maid were trying to regain the initiative, but Two could hear how the battle was going. He privately commed the commander, “Sir, we need to pull out.”

“Excuse me, sergeant? It’s barely been two minutes, what are you saying-”

“This isn’t a battle, sir. It’s a hunt. It was the same on Pantora, the Mandos had their killing fields set up, and anything we sent in just got wiped out. They’ve prepared this ground too well, we need to fall back before we get overrun.”

“Sergeant, I will not fall back from a dozen armed bounty-hunters, regardless of how well prepared they are. First platoon is about to make the entrance, second platoon is holding the right flank, and the  _ Bulwark _ is sending down fighters to cover the bombers.”

Two paused for a moment and listened to the battle chatter on the clone band:

“Medic! I have two troopers down.”

“He’s on your right!”

“Bring it down-”

“Bravo squad ineffective, falling back!”

“We’ve reached the entrance. Bombs didn’t do much. Looks like the scouts didn’t make it in; sniper took them out. Omen, Feather take your squads in. Cable, hold the entrance.”

He focused in on the last communication, from First platoon. He had heard it before, the words coming back to him as clearly as if it had been yesterday.

_ “We’re entering the maintenance area now, keep an eye on those corners. If they’ve been here long enough to dig in, they’ll know the blind spots…” _

_ “They kept families in here? Our barracks on the ship are nicer.” _

_ “By twos, people, sweep and clear. We need to secure this area for the Troopers.” _

_ “Hostile, right! Take him down!” _

_ “Moons, he’s fast!” _

_ “Man down! Medic!” _

_ “Don’t let up! This is our turf, not theirs!” _

_ “Get some, traitors! For the Emp-” _

_ “Goddess protect, fall back! Fall-” _

Two didn’t need to hear it a third time; he switched his comms to the  _ Bulwark’s _ frequency, “ _ Bulwark _ , G2. Immediate suppression on my position. Multiple single airborne targets, 100m burst, danger close over!”

One didn’t even have time to respond to the call, which while unusual, was in Two’s authority for the mission. The reply was almost immediate, “G2,  _ Bulwark _ . Immediate suppression, your position, 100m burst. Authentication?”

One responded, “G1 authenticates!”

Two switched to their general channel, “Immediate suppression fire mission, 100m burst, danger close!”

It took the ships in orbit seconds for such a simple mission, and soon green fire rained from upon high. At least one Mandalorian was caught in the sudden storm, but the real effect was upsetting their trap. The pressure of the explosions resounded through Two’s armor.

“Sir, first platoon reports they are falling back with heavy casualties,” Maid said as he approached. By now the fighting was close enough that the clones around them were taking occasional potshots into the surrounding woods. Had they really been pushed back all the way to here in just a few minutes?

One nodded in response, “I’ve just contacted the  _ Bulwark _ for extraction. Shuttles and escort are en-route. I’m having the bombers and ships create a firewall between our position and the depot. Get your men back here now or they will be right in the target zone.”

“Yes, sir. All platoons fall back to LZ! We have an incoming fire mission, move it people!”

They began moving back quickly, even Two occasionally now taking shots at the silent killers in the trees. Some of the clones were trying to evac their injured brethren, but the Mandalorians fell on the wounded like locusts on an open field. The clones quickly learned that one casualty could become a squad if they didn’t stop, and Two saw one Mandalorian use a flamethrower to teach an especially heroic group that lesson. Two briefly remembered the tubes where they had found these clones. If things were this bad in the rear, he was glad that they had plenty more back on the ship.

By the time the TIE bombers began taking out dozens of trees with indiscriminate bombing runs, they were almost back to where they had landed. Two could see the heat off of the three shuttles as they decelerated into the atmosphere. More TIEs streaked overhead, and a line of green fire formed a wall between them and the depot. Realizing they had carried the day, the Mandalorians faded away. Maybe some got caught in the hell the  _ Bulwark _ was dropping on them from orbit, but Two doubted it. As the shuttles landed, Two noticed they had less than half their original number, and perhaps only a quarter had escaped without being wounded. Four was attending to a shot that had penetrated Three’s armor as the commander directed them to enter the first shuttle.

Maid and a squad of guards hovered protectively over Grey Squad as they approached the shuttle. The commander spoke to the clone captain, “Maintain a perimeter and have the  _ Bulwark _ adjust fire as needed. It will take at least one more trip to get everyone out. We will keep the TIEs overhead, but they are big targets to the Mandos’ missiles hovering up there.”

“Understood, sir. We’ll regroup and-” His words were cut off as a heavy bolt impacted the back of his helmet and threw the clone forward. Even as his brothers returned fire at the sniper, Maid was dead before he hit the ground. It turns out the Mandalorians had cleaned his platoon up nicely. One took the cue to get on the shuttle before he joined the other commander of their little attack. What clones could fit joined them, primarily the wounded by unspoken decision. It would be a crowded trip back up.

As the shuttle rose off the surface of the planet and turned, Two saw more blaster bolts, bombs and turbolaser explosions rocking the forest. Just as he was starting to relax, a final bolt flew through the closing door and impacted the clone standing next to him. Then, the shuttle was away.

Two wasn’t sure if the clones had simply run out of medics or if no one could reach the trooper bleeding out slumped against Two’s side. He and another clone held the trooper up until he felt the shuttle land back on the Bulwark and the hatch opened. The clones poured out as more medics rushed in to help their fallen brothers. Two knew they would spend more time burying their dead then tending their wounded. Unless these Mandalorians were uncharacteristically sloppy, they didn’t believe in leaving the job unfinished.

Finally, pulling his helmet off, Two exited the shuttle to see the commander talking grimly to Clockwork, “Well sir, they won round one. What are our options for round two?”


	12. Cold Calculations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Covert Overrun, A Quarantine Lifted

The frustration was visible on everyone’s faces as they looked over their limited resources on the holo display on the bridge. The  _ Bulwark _ was fast, armored, and well armed enough to slip into and out of dangerous situations to deploy Grey Squad and later retrieve them. They just didn’t carry the resources for a siege.

The display listed what was left of their clones; four companies left, with only one at combat readiness. The company that had attacked the covert had lost forty clones, an entire platoon of its strength, but the casualties had been concentrated amongst the officers and non-coms. Of the remaining three companies, two were riddled with clones still suffering from hibernation sickness. The Seventh just didn’t have the resources to properly treat them, and so the clones had remained on the  _ Bulwark _ . Otherwise, they had their depleted fighter and bomber squadrons, both of limited use in taking the covert, and nothing else.

“We could request reinforcements from the fleet?” Clockwork offered.

“Impossible.” the Captain replied dismissively. “It would take days for the Grand Admiral to send reinforcements, even if he consented. And I doubt he would want to dispatch a destroyer to support taking out a single small outpost when one of his two top units is already here. He gave us this job, Commander, we need to show that his trust was not unwarranted.” 

“And regardless, we don’t have the time,” Two added. “They know why we are here. Eventually, one of them is going to get a good scan of ships in orbit and realize that it’s only our three ships. Once that happens, they’ll start planning an escape. The only reason we have them pinned right now is because they’re probably assuming we have a lot more forces up here than we do.”

“Captain, my men only have basic equipment,” Clockwork interjected. “If we had boarding shields then maybe we could force our way through…”

“Unfortunately, Mandalorians love explosives, so that would just make your men targets...” Two replied. He continued studying the display, the lines of clones and fighters ranked like so many assets and ammunition lists he had seen before. He briefly glanced over at the commander and noticed a gleam in his eyes; The man had an idea.

“How many did we manage to kill on the first attack?” the commander asked, clasping his hands behind his back.

“Heads-up display data sent back to the Seventh confirmed three kills. Two were the result of the bombardment,” the Captain responded.

At that, everyone went silent. Two knew he had said ten to one were good odds for the Mandalorians, but even he had not expected that.

“Sir, the cloud cover has broken over their site. You might want to see this,” one of the bridge crew monitoring the planet spoke up, her voice concerned. Since pulling back a few hours before, they had kept some fighters patrolling overhead and had been scanning in case any ships powered up below. But a storm had followed their withdrawal, making direct observation impossible until now.

The four of them walked over to the sensor viewer, taking in the view below them. . The bombardment had more or less flattened the forest within several hundred meters of the depot in every direction. That made the recent activity of the Mandalorians apparent. The Captain broke the silence first, “What is that?”

“Pyres. They are burning their dead.” Two said.

“There are only two…” Clockwork said.

“They must have a medic down there.”

The commander pointed to another part of the image, “Zoom in there- what are those?” The image enhanced a space away from the funeral pyres. As the image panned over the area, Clockwork turned away. On sharpened stakes were the heads of two dozen clones, arrayed in neat rows.

“Why would they do that?” the commander asked.

“Because they know we are watching,” Two replied. “They are sending us a message. They aren’t afraid.”

“Then we should remind them who holds the high ground,” The Captain blustered. “Weapons, fire a burst-”

“No, sir!” The commander interjected. “They brought the younglings outside. If we fire, we risk hitting our target.”

The Captain gave the commander a sour look before turning away from the display screen, “Lieutenant, Commander, there are ten Mandalorians down there. You have over four hundred troopers. We cannot let them defeat us.”

The commander motioned Two over away from the others. Two excused himself and joined the junior officer, “Sir?”

“How much ammo do you think they have left?” he responded.

“Ammo, sir?” It wasn’t a question people would normally ask. The reason everyone used blasters was that a single weapon could fire a nearly limitless supply of bolts.

“Yes, I was noticing the numbers of clones left. We need to push through the unenviable position we are in, and right now that means we need to expend about two hundred clones to get past the ten Mandalorians guarding the depot.” It was clear to Two that the commander had asked him over so he could think his half-formed plan out loud.

“Even if Clockwork agreed to take those kinds of losses, sir, we don’t have two hundred spare clones.” Two offered. 

“I beg to differ, Sergeant. That display lists over four hundred bodies available.”

“Most of which are sick, sir.”

“I discussed this with Four days ago. Cryo-sickness is mostly a concern for mental faculties; memory and cognitive ability are impacted, but there are limited physical implications.”

“You saw what they did to the clones we sent down. If we line up the sick-” Two had to stop himself as the commander’s plan became clear. 

“Like you said, target practice. And every shot they make at our, shall we say, degraded clones, is one less on someone who can shoot back.”

“I’m not sure Clockwork would-”

“Clockwork is a Clone Commander, Sergeant. His type of troopers follow orders, and this would be far from the most poorly planned attack clones have been asked to execute. All he needs to do to protect his brothers is kill ten bounty hunters,” the commander turned to the Captain before Two could respond.

Two took a few seconds to settle himself. By the time he had turned, he could see the commander had finished outlining his plan.

“With all due respect, sir, you cannot ask me to send our-” Clockwork’s tone was a mix of respectful and incredulous. 

“I am not asking you to do anything, Commander. I am ordering you as mission commander.”

Clockwork looked to the Captain for support. He simply shrugged, “We have our orders, Commander. If you have a better plan I am willing to hear it. Otherwise, do your job.”

Two knew the clone would look at him. He was the voice of experience here, possibly the only one who understood what the commander had just ordered Clockwork to do. Surely, Two would help him. 

Two thought back to the spaceport on his beloved Pantora in flames, the corpses of his people floating frozen in space, the fields of dead soldiers on Mandalore during the early days of the Purge, and here, the clone heads mounted on pikes. 

“It’s our best option, sir.”

* * * * *

The plan had not been quite as simple as the commander had implied. To begin with, it would again take multiple flights to get all the clones down to the planet. During that time they needed to keep the Mandalorians pinned down. That was where Grey Squad came in:

“Target, six-o-clock high,” Five’s voice came through the comms.

“Got him,” Two replied lazily, lining up the shot and sending a bolt towards the Mandalorian. The shot either glanced off his armor or missed, but the target dived down all the same. Two rolled up onto his feet. He was only a few meters away from his initial position, moving low, when he saw the puff of dirt indicating one of the Mandalorians had returned fire.

“G, this is Stuka-3, I’m making my approach now.”

“Understood, Stuka-3. Targets are marked, grey smoke danger close.”

“Confirmed.”

They all covered their head as the whine of the TIE bomber filled the air around them, and a moment later the fiery bloom of proton bombs leveled yet another grove of trees. No one in Grey Squad had any delusions that their bomber had actually killed one of the Mandalorians, but that wasn’t their job. 

“G, this is Clockwork. We are ready to begin the attack.”

“Understood, Commander. Commence attack. Stuka, begin final bombardment. Wolf area is now free fire, watch for the clones if you can. Commander, close air support is en route,” the commander of Grey Squad responded, in a flurry of orders to the clones and their fighters overhead. 

Two heard the affirmatives fire back as he and the rest of Grey Squad moved back. He could already see and hear the clones approaching, and he wanted to move back to the LZ and away before he had to see more.

Only about half of the clones with cryo-sickness could even hold blasters, the rest had been given blades or compromised clubs. Even sick though, they still had the instinctual understanding that their brothers were family. It turned out that it didn’t take much to convince them to move in one direction. Two assumed that once someone started shooting at them, they would figure out what to do. Afterall, their primary objective here was to die. Anything else was a bonus.

They made it to the LZ and a waiting shuttle, tense clones guarding the ramp as Grey Squad boarded. As soon as everyone was aboard, clones included, they were off. If this succeeded, their firepower wouldn’t be essential to the outcome. If it failed, then at the very least, they had only lost clones.

Two keyed into the clones’ general channel, and Clockwork’s powerful voice rang through, “Push forward! Those are your brothers, and we will not let the Mandalorians take them from us!” 

If this went poorly, the two clones on the shuttle would be the last clones remaining from the battalion. Two had already asked Four and Three to make arrangements for these two, if it came to that.

“Targets directly ahead, open fire!”

“No, wait! Don’t just run ahead- don’t-”

Two looked to Four, who gave him a quick nod. He turned, walking from the troop-compartment to the cockpit where the commander and their pilot were watching from the front viewport. The clones had been somewhat organized in a parade formation when they’d broken through to open ground.

The Mandalorians had waited until they’d reached the exposed wasteland around the depot to start firing. Both sides knew the Mandalorians would’ve mined the area, and before the clones arrived their bombers launched a final run, hopefully clearing the way for the infantry. A lone Mandalorian had flown up to meet the bombers, only to be intercepted by two fighters. In the end, Two considered the encounter a draw; one TIE fighter for one Mandalorian.

Once the clones reached the clearing, with the dust still settling from the bombs, the Mandalorians had opened fire. The entire front line was made up of degraded clones. Some fired back, if not well. Others just kept walking, but the worst, Two watched, were the ones who charged. Roughly two-thirds of the clones charged forward. Two could hear their screaming over the comms, along with the yells of the remaining sane clones, pleading with them to hold formation. Some followed their mad brothers, trying to lay down suppressive fire for them. The few heavy-weapon teams attempted to saturate the depot, but the situation was already in too much chaos to be anything but a slugfest. Luckily, Two thought, clones were ideal at slugfests.

Unfortunately, Mandalorians had never seen a fair fight where they couldn’t cheat. One or two had remained hidden in the trees, and now appeared behind the clones watching their brothers sprint to their deaths. . They didn’t put up a fight for very long, but the clones paid a heavy toll in blood for each of the Mandalorians. Two guessed that those two had likely killed at least forty between them. One appeared to have just thrown herself at the clones, detonating all her explosives as a living bomb. Two shuddered. Even during the worst of the Purge, acts like that had been rare.

Unfortunately, the cold calculations of the commander were proving correct. While the crater-filled land between the forest and the depot was littered with white-armored bodies, the clones had broken through to the depot itself. Two tried switching back to the clones’ general comms channel, but all he heard was the screaming of the mad.

It took another thirty minutes before a coherent signal reached their shuttle, “G1, this is CT-2830. Commander Clockwork was killed on the final push, but the base is secured. We have located multiple children in a secure building.”

Relieved, Two sent a quick message to Four and Three to stand down as the commander responded, “Understood, CT-2830. We are coming down.”


	13. Well In Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A hollow victory, a snare set

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Different_frequency for letting me add one of her characters from The Last Place You'd Look as a cameo.

Mandalorians had been called the greatest warriors in the galaxy, but twenty millenia of failed wars against the Old Republic, the Slightly Less Old Republic, and the Empire would seem to discredit that claim. How great could any warriors be when their opening act was to be defeated by whichever galactic power happened to come across them? 

In Two’s opinion, however, those observations missed the point. Mandalore was never an empire. Mandalorians were never really even an army. They were warriors, not soldiers, and the distinction between those two concepts was obvious to Two as their shuttle descended towards the depot.

Every medic and medical droid on the  _ Bulwark _ and it’s two escorts had been shuttled down once the fighting ended. Two had suggested bringing them down earlier, but Clockwork had said that would just create too tempting a target. Now, their three landing shuttles and even the small craft that would have been unsuited for landing when the Mandalorians were still a threat were in constant motion between the planet and the ships in orbit. Even so, bodies still littered the field. It reminded Two of Orto Plutonia’s frigid surface. At first lifeless and identical wherever you looked, but with danger underneath. 

“Captain, this is Grey One. We have just landed, what is your status?” the Commander said as the shuttle’s ramp lowered.”

“I’m on my way to meet you right now, sir. If I’m not there, ask any of the troopers for Burner, that will point you to me,” the reply came. Two wondered what the clone had done to earn that name, as he looked at the bodies, he knew what it was going to mean after today. They had lost almost half their total strength. Over two hundred clones were dead.

“With respect, let’s stick to formal codes until back on the ship Captain. No need to get sloppy just as we near the end,” the commander replied.

“Of course sir. I’ll be up in just a minute.”

As the door lowered, Two got a much closer look at the results of their attack. He had seen fields like this before, on Mandalore, but there the dull camo of the Imperial Army had been intermixed with the white of stormtrooper shock legions. And the noise had been worse. The cries for parents and loved ones that wouldn’t come, for help being applied too slowly and without comfort from emotionless droids. 

The clones didn’t cry out. They didn’t wish for mothers they’d never had or loved ones they had never left behind. They were soldiers; from the moment they had gasped being pulled from the Kaminoan tubes. The majority of them had known that at worst they would die alone as discarded war material, and at best, together with their real family: their brothers. In many ways, Two thought, after being frozen long past their time and awoken decades later, this was in some ways the best death they could have hoped for. They didn’t cry out now not because they had no one to cry out for, but because they had no regrets. They had been good soldiers. 

That fact, however, did little for the living. The ramp of their shuttle lowered and Grey Squad and their two remaining clone escorts stepped out. The remaining sane clones from the battle were gathered into one of two groups: the majority hunted through the sea of corpses for confirmation of the eradication of the Mandalorians, while the other group herded the survivors of the two degraded companies. They didn’t need many for the second job; there were not many survivors.

A clone officer, accompanied by six escorts, approached and saluted .  Two noticed the unusual alertness and tense behavior of the six guards. Burner was their last surviving officer, and it appeared these clones had no intention of letting the Mandalorians take him from them. They had taken so much today. Unfortunately, that wasn’t how the Empire worked.

From his tone, Two would almost think he hadn’t noticed what he was wading through. Almost. “Sir, I have my men securing the area now. We have accounted for eleven bodies, excluding the two they cremated ahead of the battle.”

“Very good, Captain. And the children?” the commander replied.

“They are in the lowest level of the depot, sir. They had their last line of defense located there, as well as their wounded.”

“Do you mean to say there are adult survivors, Captain?” Four interjected.

“No, ma’am. They were on the last line with what must have been their medic.”

“And the children?” the commander stated, taking back control of the conversation and sounding only mildly annoyed.

“We have them secured where they were sheltering, sir,” Two could hear the control in Burner’s voice. This man was using his duty to hold it together. Two knew the feeling. He had stood where the clone stood now, giving a similar report while his friends had been dying all around him. 

“Very good, Captain. Take us to them.”

Entering the depot was akin to descending into hell each step deeper brought them closer to the abyss. Their first attack had made it clear to the Mandalorians what was facing them. And while the Watch firmly believed in tactical retreats, with the possibility of escape cut off by the ships in orbit, they had decided to sell their lives for the highest possible price. The passages into the depot were riddled with traps, set with whatever heavy weapons they had left and most of their explosives. Those clones had been zipped neatly into bags already. Mottled, drying stains dotting the walls in various places along the corridor showed where the waves of degraded clones had triggered each trap. If there had been squads advancing with care to search for such traps, with support following, maybe the troops would have avoided them. Maybe the Mandalorians would have had an even worse counter to that. But the commander had removed that option.

They finally entered what must have been the main common room. It had perhaps started it’s life as an old cargo-bay, but it had ended it as where most of the Mandalorians had made their last stand. Another field of white plastisteel-armored corpses lay strewn in the entry-way leading up to a hastily thrown together defensive position. Two had to give the Mandalorians credit; they had set up a good kill box, moving all the equipment they could away from the entrance to deny the clones cover while maximizing their own. 

But cover hadn’t mattered to the degraded clones. No cover just meant they had no obstacles between them and their orders. In the end, the precious cover the Mandalorians had so carefully hoarded had been their own demise. Coming around the edge of what had been a neatly stacked wall of crates, Two was greeted with a mix of plastisteel and beskar-clad bodies.. Each Mandalorian was surrounded by ten or more clones, but the Mandalorians were warriors; the clones were soldiers. Even in their psychosis, the clones had known to separate the Mandalorians, forcing them apart and taking them down by sheer weight of numbers. In the end, even as degraded as they were, the greatest soldiers in the history of the galaxy still overcame its greatest warriors. Two prayed they would never have to go up against each other again. If the Old Man had his way, they wouldn’t need to. 

As they exited the room, Two’s gaze was drawn to one of the Mandalorians who had fallen closest to the exit. He had died backed against the door, shielding it with his body until brought down by blasters, as the scours on his green armor implied. In the violence of his death, his helmet had been tossed off and Two froze.. This Mandalorian, this terrorist of the Watch who had more than likely killed thousands in his time, was Pantoran. 

The rest of the clones and Grey Squad moved past into the next room, but Four noticed Two’s hesitation and detoured back to him, “Sir, if you need to secure this room, I’ll hang back for a moment with you. One should be safe now.”

“Yes-” Two said, barely processing her voice as he removed his own helm to see without the overlays. He just wanted to ask him why, but he realized that the answer wouldn’t matter, because it wasn’t the right question. The right question was what had happened in this galaxy to make two sons of Pantora end up on a dead rock on the other side of the galaxy, killing each other. What had happened to make it so neither of them could go home?

He wondered, had their situations been reversed, if this Pantoran would have paused for him; if it was Two’s bared face beneath the gaze of a victorious Mandalorian, if he would’ve hesitated. Did he know what his comrades had done? Had he been there? Helped them? How long had he and this dead Mandalorian, both far from home and fighting for causes that, in the end, had nothing to do with protecting their homeworld, been fighting each other? 

Pantora had supported the Empire because the Empire had evolved from the Republic, not for any deep ideological reason. His people had respected the stability that the Empire promised, but had always been held back by the Emperor’s Pro-Human Policies. For most, it had not mattered. For Two, it had been simply another challenge to overcome, and another element that had led him to the Old Man. 

Had those same actions driven this Pantoran to fight against the Empire, in some misguided hope of freeing his planet? And in the end, had he regretted his own end? Had he seen the futility of dying on some forgotten rock? Of being killed off by the Empire not for any crime; his crimes had all been forgotten, but, but simply because he decided that death was preferable over surrender? In the end, it wasn’t so much the ones who opposed the Empire that got hurt, but the ones that got in its way. 

Two put his helmet back on and turned back to Four. She had been waiting for him, in the way that transcended race or planet of origin or background; the way of soldiers standing guard over a comrade in grief. He gave her a nod, and they hurried to catch up with the rest of the squad.

They caught up just as the commander reached the room with the children. The clones had moved the dead bodies out of sight, and a squad of clones stood guard outside while five terrified children watched them huddled together in a corner. There were five children in total: three humans, one rhodian, and a togruta. Their target wasn’t among them.

The commander was already talking to Burner, “The target must be here somewhere. Search the facility. he’s small, an infant; they may have hidden him somewhere.”

“My men are already searching the depot for survivors, sir, if he’s here-” Burner was interrupted as another clone strode up to them.

“Sir, we have a ship leaving the surface. An old model, pre-Empire. It’s flying into the same path as the same path as the evacuation shuttles.”

“Shoot it down, all batteries!” The voice of the Captain on the  _ Bulwark _ came over the channel.

“No, sir!” The commander shouted into his helmet mic. “The target is on that ship!”

“We can’t get a shot, he’s using the medical transports for cover!”

“Fighters, disable that ship  _ now _ ,” the Captain’s enraged voice filled everyone’s ears.

“It’s too late, he’s-” the voice dropped with the expectation of imminent Imperial displeasure, “he’s just jumped to hyperspace, sir. They must have had an emergency jump plotted.”

“Track it, he couldn’t have gone far that close to the planet!”

“That will be unnecessary, Captain. The situation is well in hand,” came a new, unmistakable voice from behind them all. The four soldiers of Blue Squad approached; Blue One carrying a holo-disk projecting an image of the Old Man looking at them as if nothing at all were amiss.

Everyone present snapped to attention. The Admiral was clearly transmitting to multiple positions, as it took him a moment to dismiss them with a wave. Blue One walked forward, carrying the puck into easy conversation distance.

“While your force was launching their attack, I anticipated the Mandalorians might smuggle a single ship away from this depot. Under the cover of your attack, Blue Squad was able to infiltrate this base, locate that ship, and place a homing beacon on it.”

“But why let the child escape, sir?” The Captain’s voice came again over the channel.

“Escape, Captain? We know exactly where the child is. I had hoped this attack would be the end to this little game, but as is, we still have the advantage. The Mandalorian has no allies left: the New Republic would arrest him on sight, and what you did here to what is left of his own people will make it clear that no one else can protect him. All he can do is run, and now he cannot even do that.”

“What is our next play then, sir? Follow the Mandalorian’s ship?” Two asked, stepping forward.

“Not yet, Sergeant,” said the Old Man, their eyes meeting for just a moment, “We will wait until he arrives at a planet. Let him think he has escaped us, and then we turn his refuge into a trap.”

“Understood, sir. Will it be just the  _ Bulwark _ ?”

“No, this attack has shown how dangerous these ‘Children of the Watch’ are. I will have the Seventh standing by, one jump out. Once you have located the target, signal and we will come in to secure the planet. There will be no escape for the Mandalorian this time.”


	14. Someplace Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hero Revealed, the Comrade in Need

Din Djarin was now really regretting picking up the toy on the last planet he had been on. After all, he’d thought, the kid needed more than just the ball to play with, right? But from the moment it had been deposited into his clawed hands, Grogu hadn’t let the tiny kayt dragon stuffy out of his sight without becoming upset. Din had then made the situation worse by telling the kid how Mandalorians had used to ride similar creatures; ones that could fly. Since then, Grogu had been gleefully levitating the little toy, giggling as Din ducked out of its way through the cockpit. Even Din had cracked a smile at it, the kid’s excitement was infectious. It had all been fun and games until the kid had “flown” his new At least, he’d been laughing until he “flew” it someplace where the toy got stuck. 

He had been cleaning one of his blasters when the kid appeared beside him, gesturing up to the vent with a whimper.

“What, did you get the toy stuck up there?”

The only response he received was a concerned coo as the foundling continued to point at the vent.

Din put the blaster down, “Well, you got it up there. Can’t you pull it back out?”

The blank stare gave his answer.

“I guess not. Well, maybe you should have been more careful with your toy-” 

The kid shifted his attention from the vent to Din, resting his claws on Din’s shin and blinking up at him beseechingly with large black eyes. Those damned eyes were persuasive in ways that not even Karga could’ve dreamed, and the ignored pleas of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bounties over the years fell flat in the face of them. 

He couldn’t stand up to those eyes. No one could. 

Din got to his feet with a soft sigh, “Alright, buddy. Let’s see if I can get your toy back, huh?”

Grogu let out a soft appreciative coo and trundled after him as Din meandered over to the offending vent. 

Peering inside, Din had to give the kid credit; his new ship was mostly accessible to him, but somehow the kid had managed to lose the toy in the one vent that he couldn’t reach. He turned to Grogu, “Did you do this on purpose?”

The kid’s outraged defense of himself would have made any lawyer on a Core planet proud.

Looking around, Din spotted a few supply crates that looked study enough to support him. He stacked one on top of the other and then climbed on top. The damn thing had somehow become wedged in the back of the vent, right where it turned, and as he strained for it, his pauldron caught on the edge of the vent cover.

“Dank farrick!” Din cursed, reaching over to detach the armor. He reached back into the vent, the tips of his fingers just barely brushing the soft fabric of the toy. 

Grogu cooed concern from below, watching his caretaker balance precariously on a pile of old ration crates, elbow-deep in the bowels of his ship. Din took a moment to look down at the child, “Don’t give me that look. This is your fault. Least you could do is offer to help.”

Grogu simply blinked in a clear ‘no’.

Din sighed, turning back to the task at hand. He had just about snagged the tail end of the toy when the holocomm in the cockpit began to beep insistently. Someone was reaching out to him. That in and of itself was a surprise; short of Cara, no one should know where he was. After getting her message he had decided to lie low, and his list of friends and allies wasn’t particularly long.

To Grogu’s displeasure, he pulled his arm out, dragon-less, and climbed down before heading up the ladder to the cockpit. Once in the pilot’s chair, he keyed the activation switch for the holo. A face he hadn’t seen in months popped up: Ghex. 

“Din, is it really you?”

Din almost did a double take. Part of him had never expected to see another member of the Tribe again. Yes, the Armorer had said that some of the tribe may have survived, but he hadn’t tried to go after them. After Navarro, Cara had understood that if she ever saw any other Mandalorians, she should reach out to him. He had not been surprised that none ever had. 

Grogu had found his way to the cockpit and Din instinctively tried to block the foundling from the holo view. If Ghex was reaching out to him like this, something had happened.

“Yes, it’s me,” Din replied. “Things have been interesting. Cara mentioned that Paz had dropped by once for supplies, but that was all. I’m glad the Tribe survived.”

The pause was too long. Din had guessed this was likely not just a friendly call, and now Ghex was confirming it, “It did, but it wasn’t easy. There aren’t many of us left. When the Armorer finally returned she explained everything; what she had quested you to do. We all understood, even Paz.”

Din didn’t reply. Ghex let it hang for a moment. Some things didn’t need to be said, and others didn’t need responses.

Ghex returned to the reason he had called, “But then… Din, things have been changing out there. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.?”

Din had; between random fighter patrols and what had happened on Navarro, it looked like the Core was extending their reach into the Outer Rim, “Yeah, I’ve noticed. New Republic’s expanding their territory. The Remnant is getting desperate.”

The pause was telling, “Din, it’s not the Remnant anymore-”

Flashbacks to the past few months, to what Gideon had been doing, to what he himself had done, passed through Din’s mind, “I know about Gideon. Had a few run-ins with his people the past few weeks. That’s why we’ve been laying low for a few weeks.”

“That was you?”

Din wasn’t surprised that Gideon wasn’t keen on making it common knowledge that he had lost multiple times to a single Mandalorian ‘savage’. “Yeah, he’s still after the kid,” he spared a glance to Gorgu watching him from the other chair in the cockpit, “That’s why I’ve not reached out, you’ve done more than enough to-”

The slight tilt to Ghex’s helmet told him that they had been having two different conversations up to that point, “Din. Gideon’s dead. He’s been dead for weeks.”

The pieces were starting to fall into place, and they weren’t forming a pretty picture. No one from the Tribe would risk contacting him with news like this. And Cara hadn’t mentioned anything about this in her message. Given Gideon’s resources, it wasn’t a surprise he had escaped capture in favor of death, but... Images of Navarro came back to him, of armor piled in the sewers.

“Ghex, what happened?”

“They hit the new covert. Knew exactly where to go hit us from orbit. They sent down an entire legion. We tried to fight them off, but-”

Din could hear the emotion rising in his voice, “Ghex, calm down. What about the covert?”

“It’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“They wanted the foundlings. We couldn’t let them have them, so we hid them and tried to hold.”

“How did they find you?”

“I don’t know. Paz went out for supplies a few weeks ago. He never came back-”

“They would’ve needed more than stormtroopers to take Vizsla.”

“It wasn’t stormtroopers. They had clones, Din. It was the siege all over again!” Even over the comm, Din could hear Ghex’s breaths becoming shorter as he continued, “And some of them, they weren't right. They didn’t fight like clones. They just- tore people apart. Celiaj told me to get out. I had a ship hidden out beyond the base and was able to sneak out. I had to do a skip-jump to get to hyper-”

Ghex was in a state of shock; the poor man was barely holding it together. Din interrupted to try and get him back on track, “Ghex, did they follow you?”

“I- I don’t think so. Din, there’s no one left. They have the foundlings-”

“We’ll get them back, but first you need to go someplace safe. Head for Navarro. Ask Cara Dune-”

“You aren’t listening, Din! They know about Navarro! Nothing there can protect us-”

Din had seen this before on jobs that had gone sideways: Ghex was panicking. Actually, Din could feel the crippling edges of panic worming their way in around his armor as well. He needed more information, but it was clear that Ghex wasn’t in the state of mind to discuss this over the comms. He needed a plan.

“ _ Udesii, vod _ . Give me a second, I’ll find someplace safe for us to meet,” He responded. Turning from the comms, Din pulled up his star chart. Fett had been kind enough to share a number of planets not found on the official charts, but without knowing what planets Ghex had the ability to navigate to, their options were limited. He needed somewhere out of the way; uninhabited, but not off most major star charts.

Scrolling through the charts, he realized how small a list that was without significant travel. But if he could talk Ghex down long enough for them to meet, he thought he could talk the other Mandalorian back into fighting shape. Then they could plan their next move.

He spotted a potential place; the only planet in the Sotis system, a few hours from where he was idling. It had been charted, but nothing on it would draw attention, and was too close to the edge of Outer Rim for colonization. It would work.

“Ghex, can you get to the Sotis system? There’s a single planet suitable for life there. It’s uninhabited, and away from the shipping lanes. Should be empty, we can talk there without anyone finding us.”

Ghex looked away from the screen, apparently checking his own navicomp, “Yeah, I see it. I can be there in a few hours.”

“Good, I’ll meet you there. I’ll probably get there first, I can scope the place out. If there are any issues, I’ll contact you.”

“Alright, but Din-”

Din cut him off, there was no point in creating any more distractions now, “Doesn’t matter now, Ghex. Just get to the planet and we can talk there.”

The other Mandalorian simply nodded before cutting off the transmission. Din glanced over to Grogu, who was looking at him with concern from the copilot seat.

“Well, looks like we’re done hiding, kid.”

The only response he got was an outstretched hand and hopefully-raised ears. Underneath his helmet, despite everything, Din allowed himself a brief smile as he reached over to the throttle and unscrewed the ball from the threading, “Your dragon is gonna have to wait for a while, buddy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Udesii, vod - Calm down, brother.


	15. The Familiar Whine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Target Runs to Ground, The Final Threat Arrives

“We’ve just confirmed it, sir. It is the Sotis system.”

“Then we have him.the Old Man said his figure flickering on the coms table. “Captain, have your squadron intercept and detain that Mandalorian. I shall gather the rest of the Seventh and have them wait one system out. If anything happens, we will be in position to assist you within minutes.”

“Understood, sir,” replied the Captain. “What are your orders if the Mandalorian has reinforcements?”

“Eliminate them as necessary. Your attempt at diplomacy was commendable, but in the end futile. We don’t have the resources for another fight like your last one.” Two looked over to Burner. The clone had received a battlefield promotion by virtue of survival and was now in charge of what remained of their depleted Trooper force. The clone had his helmet off, and Two saw his jaw tighten ever so slightly at the remark.

Now the clone spoke up, “With respect, Grand Admiral, my men are looking to finish this mission, and if he tries bringing friends, we’ll be happy to greet them.”

The Old Man looked to the clone, “I commend your enthusiasm , Commander, but remember that the primary objective is to capture the child alive.” The assembled individuals all nodded as he continued, “It is unlikely, given our activities over the past week that there are any serious reinforcements left. The New Republic will be busy with Domwei and the various refugees you have alerted them to.” 

While the Mandos likely would not give them any points for putting a distress beacon for the New Republic in orbit, it had served two purposes. First, it had let them offload the Mandalorian children they’d found hidden in the depot without having to do anything unconscionable. It had also allowed them to resolve the issue of the surviving degraded clones. Technically they would be prisoners of war but, and Two hated that this was the universe now, the New Republic could take care of them while the Seventh simply couldn’t. Also, to be prisoners of war, the New Republic would need to realize there is a war going on out here, and Two figured he’d be dead before they did that. Rabid clones attacking terrorist Mandalorians was the stuff of the holo-vids, not military campaigns. Until now at least, Two admitted to himself.

“Very good, sir,” the commander responded. “Grey Squad and as many clones as we can shuttle down will perform a combat insertion on top of the Mandalorian’s ship. We will capture or eliminate any adult Mandalorians, and secure this child for interrogation.”

“I shall have our remaining fighter and bombers sent down in support of the Lieutenant’s attack,” the Captain added. “We won’t give them the opportunity to prepare any defenses this time, Grand Admiral.”

The Old Man nodded, his approving eyes obvious even in the hologram, “Very well. I expect a rapid operation then. Do not worry about extracting. Once you have secured the child, signal me, and I shall come in personally to collect it.”

A final “yes sir!” from all of those assembled ended the conversation. The Old Man’s image blinked out on the comms table and the Captain turned to getting the  _ Bulwark _ and it’s escorts underway. The rest of them exited the bridge to prepare their own affairs.

They weren't very far from Sotis, only a few hours at most. In Two’s opinion, that happened to be exactly too long. It wasn't enough time to get any meaningful rest, but constituted too much time to simply get ready for the drop. Even after preparing his gear, coordinating with the commander, checking in with the rest of the squad, and verifying with the pilot on how the drop would go, he would still have an uncomfortable amount of time to himself before they actually had to assemble. Two wasn’t looking forward to seeing what demons of his past would stop by while he was alone and unoccupied.

Which made it a pleasant surprise when Four walked up to him as he rounded the corner, “Sir, I was hoping for a bit of your time?”

“What is it?” he replied automatically, glad for the distraction.

“Three,” she responded in the flat professional tone of medical officers across the Empire.

His first reaction was to just nod, going through his head all the possible trouble Three could have gotten into that would lead Four to come to him, “I see, is she injured?”

That was apparently not what the medic had been expecting, “What- no, well I don’t think so. It’s not that kind of issue, sir. Normally I wouldn’t mention it, but given how short all our fuses are right now-”

“And how short hers was to begin with. I understand. So what is the specific issue?”

She gestured for them to walk and talk. This was either personal or complex enough to not simply explain a few doors from the bridge, “Look, you know we both came through the skip. Both lost people in it. The Chimera was mostly a wreck for a year after we got back.”

They rounded a corner and stepped into one of the lifts. “I know,” Two said, holding off any admonishment in his voice, “I was in the first wave to reestablish contact, Four.”

“Right. Well, the thing is, she had family. Turns out they died in the war-”

Two cut her off, “I doubt there are more than a dozen people on board who haven’t lost someone, Four.” He continued with a slightly harsh tone, “Not all of us can be orphans.”

She was quiet for a few seconds, the lift arriving at their destination and the two stepping out. Finally she found her place and continued, “So, funny that you bring up war orphans, sir. I think Three is seeing one of the clones.”

He somehow managed to keep his composure as they entered their armory, thinking to yet another advantage the Mandalorians had on always wearing helmets, even when not in combat. Once inside, he turned to the medic, “What?”

“She came to me asking for rubbers. We ran out of implants a while ago and unsurprisingly, the clones don’t keep any. Apparently there wasn’t a need for it during the Clone Wars; something about ninety-nine percent of the service being clones or Jedi.”

“People blow off steam. Your point?”

“This isn’t just blowing off steam. It might be a dissociative disorder-”

Two stopped her, “You really hate them, don’t you?”

She looked surprised at this, “Sir?”

“The clones. Four, I’m a non-human in the Empire. I see how you look at us. If anything, the clones get it worse but, I shouldn't be surprised if half the women on the ship haven’t-”

Four held up her hands, as if he was physically attacking her, “Please, sir, just stop. It’s not the same thing. You're just another species; they were… manufactured. Remember the depot? They aren’t natural, I don’t care how hot their template was.”

“Four, take some friendly advice: drop this. As long as Three covers my ass during the mission I could care less what she’s doing with her own in-between. And the same applies to you. Now, anything else?”

Suitably rebuked, she retreated a little, “No, sir.”

“Then I believe we have a mission to prepare for, Ensign. Carry on.”

He almost never acted so formally around the squad. If she didn’t understand just how thin the ice she had been standing on before, she certainly did now. She gave him a stiff salute and retreated. As the door closed behind her, Two turned to his locker, mentally calculating whether he could work slowly enough to drag out the time until the drop.

* * * * *

“Dirt in fifteen seconds, people!” the pilot’s voice came over Two’s helmet comm. So far, everything had gone according to plan. They had exited hyperspace dangerously close to the planet and immediately launched everything they could while the  _ Bulwark _ and her escorts in orbit began scanning for any surprises. The found one, and only one: their target had attracted a friend. It was a slightly newer model nestled next to their target in a box canyon in one of the more arid portions of the planet. 

Neither ship was much larger than their own shuttle, and they had all three screaming towards the surface, loaded with every clone they could fit inside. Three had mentioned that the clones had had to draw straws for places, as everyone had volunteered to finish this particular mission. Two understood that feeling. If anything, it simply further disproved all of Four’s misgivings on the clones; they had yet to manufacture a machine that understood, let alone desired, revenge. You had to have a soul to feel that kind of pain.

“Five seconds,” the pilot said. Two could feel everyone in their shuttle tensing up. This wasn’t going to be like the last mission. That Mandalorian fucker and whomever his friend was were going to either lie down or be put down very quickly, famed Mandalorian warrior culture be damned.

The shuttle thumped down as it landed hard, the dim red lights of the troop bay going green as the rear hatch powered open. Two heard the cries of “Go, go!” from the clones in back as their escort of thirty tore out of the shuttle.

Grey Squad exited last, Two hearing the comforting sound of the TIEs overhead without any concerning sounds of missile launchers or jetpacks to disturb their air cover. The rest of the clones were already moving forward, and Two could hear their initial reports on his helmet comms:

_ “We have arrived at the ships. No targets present. Moving to secure.” _

_ “Echo-3, Echo-6, keep your eyes peeled. They wouldn’t leave their ships behind without some kind of security.” _

_ “Maintain the perimeter. I don’t want any more surprises.” _

Two ignored the rest of the messages. After the depot, he had become an expert at telling the difference between routine clone chatter and the sounds of a fight. The five members of Grey Squad approached the ships to see a group of clones working to open both ships. Unlike the ship they had captured the first Mandalorian in, both of these were generic light-craft. One was some form of repurposed light freighter, with a series of turrets on top and behind the ship to serve as a weapons system. It was designed to fend off attackers, not be one. The other was a standard Outer Rim up-armed patrol craft. The clones had taken care to make sure that both turrets were empty; Two didn’t want to think what those weapons could do to people, as underwhelming as they might be to starships.

The commander was discussing search patterns for the two Mandalorian pilots with Burner. They couldn’t have gone far and Two was certain that, given this location, the Mandalorian was meeting whoever had come in the second ship in one of the nearby caves.

The blast that hit the clone working to open the older ship exposed the flaw in Two’s plan. It came from above them, in the vicinity of one of the outcroppings. Of course, the damn Mandos had jetpacks; they wouldn’t bother with hiding out in caves like smugglers when they could just fly to a vantage point.

“Do we have eyes on them?” One asked over their command channel.

As if in response, more red bolts flew from the rock wall above them, toppling another clone.

“I have two targets on a ridge, two-thirds of the way up the cliff face,” One of the TIE pilots responded.

“We don’t have an easy way up there,” One thought out-loud.

“We still have one shuttle that hasn’t unloaded. My men can grab the Mandos, sir,” Burner replied before giving the order. A moment later, the assault shuttle rose towards the ridge, more red blaster fire having no impact on the shuttle’s armor. Two hoped that meant that neither of the Mandos were equipped with missiles. The shuttle could probably survive a single missile. Probably.

As the shuttle continued its steady rise, it’s own blaster firing a few shots to keep the Mando’s heads down, Two wondered if it was really going to be this easy. A shout from behind him confirmed that it wasn’t. The turret’s on the transport had activated, the nearby clones scrambling for cover as several blind shots confirmed the guns were working. But instead of opening on the fleeing clones, the turret began a slow swivel up to the transport. 

“Shuttle three, divert! Divert!”

“Negative, sir! I don't have any room to maneuver in this canyon!”

“I have the ship in my scope,” one of the TIE pilots said, the whine of its engine reverberating through the canyon as it approached on an attack run.

“Negative, Wolf-6. Until we confirm the ship is empty you are not clear to open fire. Pull back,” came the commander’s order. 

The ship’s cannon opened up on the shuttle. As the pilot had commented, at this range and with the shuttle stuck in the canyon, a child could have made the shot. Two was sure several clones were wondering just how many more of them this mission would send to meet their departed brothers from the depot, but in the end they were all expendable: the kid was not.

The shuttle tried to pull up and gain some altitude to escape out of the canyon, but at this range the cannon simply kept pounding the small ship with bolt after bolt. Even with its shields and armor, the shuttle wasn’t designed to just take that kind of fire. It almost made it above the rim of the canyon when a bolt penetrated the shield, blasting apart one of the engines in the rear. Pouring smoke, the wounded ship came crashing back down, still taking fire as it hit one wall of the canyon and showering everyone below with rocks before it finally impacted the canyon floor. Miraculously, the ship didn’t explode; the shuttle was designed to survive crashes like this. Most of the clones inside were probably alive too, Two mused.

But without the shuttle as a target, the Mandalorians turned back to the clones on the ground. Everyone in view threw themselves out of their line of sight as the ship’s guns opened up. Two saw a few clones hit, their bodies torn apart by the large bolts. A few enterprising clones tried to return fire, but their carbines simply weren’t powerful enough to do any meaningful damage to the ship.

“Five, ideas?” the commander asked their tech specialist.

“Have the  _ Bulwark _ fire an ion-blast down here to try disable the entire ship?” Fire responded.

A short conversation with the ship later and the commander gave his distraught reply, “The canyon is too narrow. The  _ Bulwark _ can’t get an angle to fire on it.”

“Don’t any of the bombers carry ion torpedoes?” Three asked.

“Of course they do, but you heard the other fighter, the Mandos would know it’s coming before it could attack and shoot the fighter down-,” One began. 

“I can mark it, sir. Designate a long-range shot,” Five replied.

“And get blasted by that turret before the torpedo lands,” the commander replied.

“Do we have a better idea? The longer we sit around here, the longer the Mandos have to come up with another idea,” Five responded, a bolt hitting the rock directly above them and showering them with dust as if to punctuate his point.

“Alright, do it,” the commander said before switching to the general command channel, “Burner, have you men suppress the Mandalorians as much as you can. Try to keep them distracted.”

Two decided to not point out that, given the tech they had in their armor, the Mandalorians were likely driving the turrets from its own optics. They might as well be suppressing the Mandos with bad Jatz music for all the difference it would make. But on the other hand, if they went for the clones, it might just give them the time to allow Five to laze the target.

“Understood, sir. On your signal,” the clone replied.

“Now!” the commander ordered.

As one, all of the clones around the ships began firing at the canyon top, covering the entire ridge where the Mandalorians were hiding in a fog of rock-dust. Five leaned out from cover, the target-marker on his rifle trained directly on the Mandalorian’s ship.

“Stuka-4, G5. Target marked for ion torpedo. Fire when ready.”

“G1, Stuka-4. Indirect fire confirmed. Torpedo set for ground-direction. Torpedo free.”

A second later, Two dimly heard the whine of the TIE bomber as it flew over the canyon at a height and angle that would have made it difficult for the turret to get more than a single shot at it. The trail of the torpedo streaked overhead before its droid-eye spotted Five’s target-marker and the missile made a sharp dive directly towards the Mandalorian’s ship.

Unfortunately, the Mandos noticed this as well and the turret began rotating, hunting for Five. As the torpedo raced down on it, the top turret found its target and opened on Five. There was nothing they could do but hope he was too small a target. It was a shame they worked for the side that ran on blood, not hope. As Two watched his comrade engulfed in blaster bolts, the ion torpedo ripped into the top of the ship.

Two’s helmet feed went dead for a moment as the residual ion energy disrupted everything around the now disabled ship. Teams of clones ran to the ship with breaching charges as Four ran to Five’s position. Two knew what she would find. People didn’t survive starship blaster hits.

The remaining clones kept up suppressive fire on the Mandos as Burner prepared one of their two remaining shuttles for a second attack on the ridge. For good measure, one of the TIEs dropped another ion-torpedo on the other ship, just to make sure there would be no more surprises.

It took a few minutes for the next shuttle to begin rising. The shuttle was climbing to the ridge when a bust of comms traffic came from orbit.

“G1,  _ Bulwark _ , be advised we have multiple hyperspace signatures arriving.”

The commander responded, “Understood, status?”

There was a pause, and then a loud crack came from overhead. Everyone turned to see the unmistakable form of a ship falling overhead engulfed in flames. A cruiser had exited hyperspace too close to the planet, and the ship had impacted the atmosphere and cracked open. For a brief second the planet had a second sun as the ship shattered on impact with the atmosphere. 

Two switched to the  _ Bulwark’s _ channel to see what was going on up there. They were so close, what could possibly be happening? The panic in the voices from orbit clarified it slightly: hell was breaking loose.

_ “The Beserker is down. Serpent is taking heavy fire!” _

_ “Shields down to ten percent. Where did they get a destroyer?” _

_ “Recall the fighters now, we need support!” _

Two heard the voice of the Captain, panic barely contained by the manic professionalism of naval officers on ships about to go down,  _ “Belay that order, send a distress message to the Seventh now!” _

_ “Communications are being jammed!” _

_ “Use the probe-droids! Send the probe-” _

The channel went dead. Down in the canyon, Two had a rotten view to see what was going on in orbit, even if he could have seen past the plume of the destroyed ship slowly making its way to the planet’s surface. Still, more fiery comets were appearing in the sky overhead. More ships were falling to the planet, and not from poor hyperspace transitions.

One looked to Two, “What just happened?”

He shrugged, noticing that the overhead fireworks had mostly silenced everyone in the canyon. Even their shuttle had paused, hovering in the canyon as if afraid to stick its head in the open. Given what had apparently just happened to the  _ Bulwark,  _ Two didn’t blame the pilot.

“Do you think it’s the New Republic?” Burner asked, scuttling over. Even the Mandalorians had clued in to something happening; all the fire in the canyon had stopped, although no one was exposing themselves to two sharpshooter’s sights.

“There’s no reason they would come out here with enough ships to take out the  _ Bulwark _ like that,” the commander replied.

“There shouldn’t be anyone out here with that firepower, sir,” Burner pointed out.

The commander simply nodded, before opening his comms channel again, “G1 to any active air assets. Does anyone have eyes out there?”

It was five eternal seconds before a response crackled, “This is Wolf-3. My sensors make at least three destroyers in orbit.” Another eon passed as they waited for the rest of the report, “Target signatures are Imperial, but-” Two assumed the fighter had been destroyed until the pilot came back over comms. “G1, Stuka-3. Ships are confirmed hostile, repeat, hostile. Take cover and wait for-”

This time they saw the reflection of the green turbolaser from the shots that must have killed their fighter. The shuttle that had been hovering close to the ridge dived back for the relative safety of the canyon. The clones and Grey Squad moved away from the two Mandalorian ships with unspoken agreement; they were an obvious target in the middle of the canyon

“Well, at least if they try to escape, we can still stop them,” Burner helpfully noted.

The commander sent Two a private comm, “Two, there isn’t some warlord with a few destroyers we somehow forgot about, is there? Those were imperial turbolasers.”

Two frowned, responding on the private channel, “There’s no one left with that kind of firepower, sir. What’s our next move?”

It was a moment before the commander gave Two his answer, this time in a transmission on the open frequency, “Mandalorian bounty-hunters. I am willing to negotiate a cease-fire.”

Some blaster bolts landed harmlessly on the ground in front of them, “I guess they figured out those aren’t our ships either, boss?” Three responded.

Ignoring her, the commander continued trying diplomacy, “Don’t mistake this new development as a meaningful change to your position. You are still trapped down here, and we control your ships.”

This time an explosive landed on the ground before detonating, driving back a few of the forward clones. There was a reason the commander was an infantry officer and not a diplomat.

Another whine filled the canyon. The familiar shriek of TIEs. Everyone craned their necks looking for the source of the sound, all of them hoping some of their fighters had survived.

“Look, over there! Coming up the canyon!” Four pointed further down the rocky walls.

Two saw it as well. There were eight ships; three transports of a class Two wasn’t familiar with, traveling with four TIE escorts. But something seemed off about them...

Before Two could decipher it, Three reported the issue for everyone, “Uh... sir? Since when did we paint the radiators white?”

She was right. All four TIEs had white radiators instead of the normal black. As they screamed in, the leading TIEs opened up on the two disabled Mandalorian ships. Green bolts detonated both vessels in a loud explosion.

“Shit, did we confirm the target was not on those ships?” the commander asked.

“Not definitively, no.” Burner replied. “But unless they left the kid in the ship in a shielded smuggling compartment, the ship was empty. We didn’t pick up signs of any lifeforms aboard. What do we do about that, sir?” the clone said, pointing to the four transports landing around the now destroyed ships.

“Hold tight, we still don’t know who they are,” the commander replied.

They made contact with the ground almost daintily, as if their pilots were afraid of cracking their hulls if they hit with the force usually seen from attack ships. For several seconds, the ships just sat there, Two noticing with grim satisfaction that despite the orders to hold fire, the surrounding clones had all zeroed in on the obvious ramps in the front of each ship.

When the ramps came down, stormtroopers rushed out. But, Two realized as he watched them pour from the craft, that wasn’t quite right. Their armor looked both heavier and less well-manufactured. As if it was still a prototype from a lab rather than standard issue.

Both sides, Clone Wars relics and these cosplay stormtroopers just stared at one another. Then two figures emerged from each transport that Two recognized instantly: Dark Troopers.

The droids immediately leveled their blasters at the clones in cover and began firing. As if startled into action, the supporting troopers also opened up. Their comms exploded with requests for orders.

Two allowed himself a brief grin as he responded, “You’re clone troopers, lads: take out those clankers!” 


	16. Four to One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reinforcements Arrive, Believers Fall.

The vortex of hyperspace spun around the Chimera as it and the rest of the Seventh raced towards Sotil. Thrawn stood at the head of the bridge watching the parsecs fly by as his crew made the final preparations behind him. The message-droid from the  _ Bulwark _ had sent only the worst-case pre-set message: “Send reinforcements.”

For things to have gone that wrong, something or, someone, new must have entered the scene. The entire Seventh, although Thrawn admitted that was a far less threatening statement than it had been before Lothal, had only been a few minutes out via hyperspace. Now, the entire fleet was en-route to the system.

“Grand Admiral,” Captain Valt said, taking the risk of approaching the Admiral as he brooded. “The  _ His Will, Indomitable Wrath, Immortal Emperor, Imperious,  _ and  _ Hammer of Naboo _ all report they are combat-ready.” Instead of returning to his business after completing his report, the man lingered close to the Admiral, clearly wanting to say something else.

“You have a question, Captain?” Thrawn responded.

“Well, sir... With the  _ Chimera _ present, those are all of our destroyers. Do you think it’s wise to commit all our heavy guns like this?”

Thrawn turned to look at the human who, to his credit, did not shrink back, “Committing all our forces is the only move, Captain. Whoever attacked our ships in the Sotil system was able to destroy a cruiser and its escorts before they could even program a message to send. If there is another power left in the Rim that believes they can move against us, it is best to discourage them early.”

The Captain met the Grand Admiral’s eye, “And to remove them?”

“Of course. Ensure all our light ships are deployed to protect the destroyers. We will be most vulnerable while we are launching our fighters.” Thrawn turned back to the window, the dismissal obvious. 

Six destroyers were an undeniably powerful force, but only against other capital ships or an undefended planet. The Rebels had proven the fault of Tarkin’s theory of ‘rule by fear’. Fear was a motivator but not everyone could be frightened. Unless the intent was to kill everyone with a backbone in the galaxy, all the Tarkin Doctrine had done was give every disgruntled rebel in the galaxy a unifying target.

“All ships preparing to exit hyperspace… now,” Valt reported from the catwalk between the two control trenches.

For a second, Thrawn just took in the scene before him; he honestly not been sure what to expect. Perhaps a New Republic fighter squadron that had gotten lucky or a pirate raid in-force. But not this. 

What he saw was two Imperial Star Destroyers flying dangerously close to the wreckage of what must have been the  _ Bulwark _ and her escorts. Still falling to the planet below were the disintegrating remains of what appeared to be a third of the capital ships. In the years up to this point, the most powerful Warlord Thrawn had faced had been Gideon, who had three destroyers in total. Whoever this was, they were either stupid enough to fly these near-irreplaceable ships into a planet or had enough of them not to care.

It was unexpected, but not altogether unwelcome.

Thrawn turned to the rear of the bridge, “Communications, hail those destroyers and order them to stand down. Inform their Captains that they are now part of the Seventh Fleet.”

“They are refusing our hails, Grand Admiral,” the reply came from the rear of the bridge.

Valt approached Thrawn, lowering his voice to make their conversation more difficult to overhear, “Sir, there shouldn’t be two destroyers just out here like this.”

“Do you have their identification codes?”

“Yes, sir. It’s the  _ Thunderchild  _ and the  _ Kingmaker _ . They were both reported missing, presumed destroyed, after Jakku.”

“Then it appears the presumption was incorrect,” Thrawn replied, leaving the implication of that statement hanging. The Empire had boasted twenty-thousand destroyers before Endor. Less than half of them had been confirmed destroyed or decommissioned by the New Republic. With all the major shipyards in New Republic hands, there were precious few places left that could repair the massive ships, let alone construct new ones. 

Thrawn had seen the state of many of the ships left; most were half-functioning, little better than mobile space-stations. The ships before him were not in that category. They were in as good, if not better, repair than the ships of the Seventh. 

Up until now, Thrawn had assumed he was the only person left alive who was aware of the Outer Rim’s supply depots and repair yards. The past few years had done nothing but confirm that belief as cache after cache of supplies and ships had been found undisturbed. Wherever these ghost-ships had come from, they hadn’t spent the last few years in a populated portion of the galaxy.

Before he could think more on that, however, the green flash of turbolaser fire drew Thrawn’s gaze and he sighed, “I suppose we have their response. All ships target the lower vessel. That one is likely to be deploying the attack force. Communications, get me in contact with Grey Squad. Have the light escorts form a picket; I want to know if they have any other forces in the system. And inform Blue Squad to prepare boarding teams. I want the other destroyer taken intact.”

A chorus of affirmatives cascaded through the bridge as the two unknown destroyers, apparently torn on what to do other than shoot at him, appeared to just float in orbit as the Seventh moved to encircle them.

“Grand Admiral, we are intercepting comms traffic between the ships. It’s an old Imperial code, pre-Jakku. It’s not one of the Warlord’s codes, sir.”

“What are they saying?” the Grand Admiral asked.

“It…” the pause was telling, “It appears they are… squabbling over who has authority, sir. It seems the commander of the ground forces is demanding that the destroyer cover him, while the other ship is demanding they escape the system.”

“Then let us end their argument for them. Have the  _ Revan _ jump in now. Ensure that  _ His Will  _ and  _ Immortal Emperor _ escort the  _ Revan _ once it arrives.”

“Aye-aye, Admiral.  _ Revan _ , this is the  _ Chimera _ . Exit hyperspace and begin interdiction mission.”

The  _ Revan _ jumped in just behind the main line of combat ships. By its size, it appeared almost the same as many of the other cruisers in Thrawn’s fleet; the ship had the same basic hull form as the  _ Bulwark _ , a smaller copy of the larger Star Destroyers aside from the four, large spheres along the hull. Those four gravity generators made all the difference.

“ _ Revan _ confirms the interdiction field is on-line, Grand Admiral. They aren’t going anywhere.”

Thrawn allowed himself the faintest of smiles, “Very good, Captain. Concentrate fire on the lower destroyer. I want to impress upon its sister that resistance will be... unwise.”

* * * * *

“Chew on that, clanker!” 

Two heard the clone yell as the last of the dark troopers went down under the overwhelming firepower of the clones and Grey Squad. If asked beforehand, he would have said landing a force of troopers right in the middle of a fortified, elite unit was asking to be gunned down. Now, he had proof.

The landing ships lacked any firepower of their own, and while the escort TIEs had tried to fend off attacks by strafing runs, this time the clones had come prepared for anything and emptied out the armory on the  _ Bulwark _ . Including rotary repeaters and missile launchers from the Clone Wars. The missiles were designed to take out heavily armored and shielded drone gunships, Burner had happily informed Two as the first approaching TIE was simply vaporized on impact. Clearly, the improvements to the new TIEs ended at their paint jobs.

Even the heavily armored dark troopers standing in the open were not offering up much of a problem to the clones. They had come here to hunt Mandalorians, but the clones had been trained to destroy droids, even the premium battle-droids of the old Empire. Compared to that, some half-trained stormtrooper wannabees had barely been worth mentioning.

Two watched as the clones surrounded the last remaining dark trooper.  One clone pulled out a vibro-knife as two other clones grabbed its arms, kicking away its blaster as the knife-wielding clone crouched and gutted the exposed cabling leading to the head. The last droid fell and, with that, the last tattered remnants of their enemies' morale vanished.

Most of the survivors fled for the landing ships, still sitting right in the middle of the clone unit. The smart ones instead tried to break out from the surrounding clones and lived a whole five seconds longer, by Two’s count.

“Sir, the Mandos!” Three’s voice came over Two’s comm and he turned to see her point. Above them, two armored silhouettes could be seen flying away. There was only one place left to fly; towards their shuttles, hiding further down the canyon.

“After them!” the commander yelled, igniting his jetpack. The three survivors of Grey Squad followed. “Shuttles, this is G1. Mandos incoming! I repeat, the Mandalorians are incoming.”

A brief pause came before the response, “Understood, G1. This is CT-82934. I have two squads at the shuttles; we’ll stop them.”

Two wasn’t so sure. The Mandalorians had noticed they were being followed and one of them, wearing red armor, peeled off and turned back, both his blasters sending red bolts flying towards Grey Squad.

The four members of Grey Squad responded in kind, but there was a reason almost no one but Mandalorians fought with jetpacks anymore. With no cover and no Beskar armor, the troopers were just another target, and while Grey Squad were good shots, so were the Mandalorians. Two watched a bolt hit the commander, the man losing altitude as Three and Four tried to put enough bolts into the air to discourage the Mandalorian from shooting further at the injured man. But he didn’t need to kill them all, just slow them down. His friend was the real killer.

_ “I have the target, open fire!” _

_ “Man down, we need backup!” _

_ “Take him down!” _

_ “What are-” _

Two briefly heard over coms what sounded like an entire missile barrage impacting the clones before the comms channel went silent. In the ensuing quiet, a thought crossed his mind. Mandalorians were warriors, killing was how they praised their gods. Technically the clones had been trained by Mandalorians; did that make this fratricide? Did Mandalore’s gods care if its children killed each other or did they see it as culling the weak? Two thought back to the Pantoran in the depot. 

The gods must be used to fratricide by now.

Two and Three came within sight of the shuttles, and right into the fire of the two Mandalorians. The one wearing silver armor ran into the ship and Two thought he saw a cloth sling over his chest. The other remained at the shuttle’s door, firing at the approaching Grey Squad as well as the few remaining clones.

“Three, take out the engines. We can’t let him escape,” One’s voice was tight with pain as he gave the order. Apparently, at least one hit had made its way through his armor.

“Yes, sir!” She replied. Three dived towards the shuttle, pulling a pair of grenades from her belt. 

The Mandalorian in red saw her and changed his focus. Two and Four kept up their barrage of fire on the lone gunman, but he clearly understood what Three was doing; he could see none of them had any heavy weapons capable of disabling the shuttle and he was willing to trust his armor to keep him alive long enough to kill Three and give his companion the time to power up the ship and escape.

Three fell like a proton bomb, heedless of the bolts pinging off her armor. Two knew their equipment, while good, wasn’t Beskar. He saw her jerk from the impacts but realized, like the Mandalorian, that it didn’t matter. She wasn’t diving anymore, she was falling; Three might be dead already but she was still going to hit the ship, and he would bet that both of her grenades were primed to detonate on impact. 

The Mandalorian glanced into the ship briefly to confirm something before he activated his jetpack, attempting to flee. He had to turn away from the ship to take off and Two took the opportunity to land a shoot on his jetpack as he did. Three hit the ship just as the Mandalorian’s jetpack exploded, sending him flying into the canyon wall at high speed. Two didn’t care how fancy his armor was; he wasn’t walking away from that one.

The ship rocked as Three’s grenades impacted the side, tearing one of the engine’s exhausts clean off. The shuttle was grounded.

“Secure the ship, the other Mandalorian has the target,” came the commander’s order. Two could hear the order coming through clenched teeth, from a mind only awake from stims. The commander was hit hard. Two glanced over to see Four already moving to where he lay against a rock.

The few surviving clones approached the shuttle as Two landed beside it. As they entered the ship, the sound of a heavy blaster echoed from the front. A moment later, more fire exploded into the canyon as the silver-armored Mandalorian rocketed straight up the canyon wall. He had blown out the cockpit to escape. He had to know that their remaining shuttle was guarded now, too secure for him to take it. Two grimaced; the Mando was fleeing out of spite now. He knew it was over but he wasn’t satisfied enough with the damn butcher’s bill to call it quits.

“Two, One is hurt,” Four’s voice came over the comms.

“How bad?” he responded.

“Bad. Shot blew clean through his armor. He needs evac now.”

“Not an option, stabilize him,” Two took a moment to switch over to the general channel, “Burner, it’s Two. I need a squadron of your clones to guard the Lieutenant and our medic. He took a shot from the Mandalorian.”

“Understood, Sergeant,” came the quick reply. “Just finished mopping up over here. Surprised there isn’t a-”

He was interrupted as, for the second time that day, the sky became filled with blinding light. Something huge had just exploded in orbit, on the same scale as when that ship had jumped into the atmosphere. When the next voice came over the comms, Two smiled; he knew exactly what had happened and why their unexpected adversaries hadn’t received any backup.

“Grey Squad, status report,” the Old Man asked.

* * * * *

“Sir, we’ve taken light casualties amongst the clones and lost two shuttles. The Lieutenant is wounded-”

“Have you secured the asset?” Thrawn asked, the slightest tinge of annoyance in his voice.

“Not yet, sir, but the Mandalorian doesn’t have anywhere to run. Clones are looking for him now. We would appreciate more bodies and air assets to help with the search.”

Thrawn wasn’t surprised Grey Squad had not completed their objective yet given the interruption these interlopers had presented, “Understood, Sergeant. Ready your wounded for evacuation and continue your search. I will send transport with more troopers and air cover momentarily.” Thrawn didn’t need to turn to know his crew was already making the necessary preparations; he had plenty of troopers to flood that canyon with bodies. 

“Yes, sir,” the Sergeant saluted before ending the transmission. Thrawn turned from the holo-table. Everything was falling into place, and once Blue Squad secured the other ship he could solve the mystery as to where they had come from and get back to the matter at hand. Its defenders, some off-brand stormtroopers, were putting up a vigorous if ultimately hopeless defense against Blue Squad. They were just a single ship; Thrawn was the Empire. 

And then his sensors began whining with proximity alerts.

“Grand Admiral, I have multiple ships coming out of hyperspace.”

“How many?” Thrawn asked, walking to the forward window to get a better look without waiting for a reply. “Have all ships maintain defensive positions and ensure the  _ Revan _ maintains its interdiction field.” The field would at least prevent whoever was approaching from exiting hyperspace on top of them.

However, that didn’t seem to be deterring their attempt. Thrawn could see the telltale sign of ships ripped from hyperspace as one, then five, then fifteen destroyers exited hyperspace in close formation; too close a formation. The ships, packed tightly before their unexpected exit, desperately tried to avoid ramming each other. He watched with distaste as two destroyers did just that, the explosion damaging another three nearby ships. Whoever was commanding these ships valued aggression over prudence. They had exited hyperspace dangerously close to the planet in an attempt to cut Thrawn off. The play had been almost assured to lose at least one of those ships to the planet, and now a third of this fleet was damaged or disabled thanks to their commander’s narrow-minded vision.

But that left ten destroyers to his six, and the  _ Hammer of Naboo _ had taken some damage during the fight. Still, Thrawn noticed that this new phantom force had no light escorts while the Seventh had dozens. This might be an ugly fight, but he could still win.

“Sir, more hyperspace signatures detected.”

“What?” Captain Valt looked over in disbelief as another dozen Star Destroyers were ripped from hyperspace on their flanks. This force had not been so aggressive in their formation and lost none in the exchange, but now Thrawn was outnumbered nearly four to one.

Now, it was interesting.

“Captain, what was it you said about those ships  _ presumed _ lost?” Thrawn asked in a conversational tone.

Valt hid the surprised stutter in his response remarkably well, “Every major fleet base was either destroyed at the end of the war or taken by the New Republic, sir. The Empire lost hundreds of ships to New Republic starfighters after the war.”

“Yes, a lone destroyer was always easy prey to a few fighters. Pity the rest of the brass seemed to overlook that. But supposition aside, just how many destroyers remain unaccounted for?” Thrawn continued, his tone completely conversational as the surrounding ships slowly disentangled from each other and began organizing into something that looked vaguely like an attack formation.

“From what we have pieced together, roughly a tenth of the fleet is still out there… somewhere.”

Two thousand Star Destroyers. That was more than enough ships to put a destroyer over every major inhabited planet in the known galaxy. “Then we will simply have to hope that whoever is commanding this attack has only a fraction of that available to them right now. We don’t have the crew to take on that many new ships,” Thrawn turned, knowing full-well the effect that quip would have on morale. “Communications, contact that fleet. Transmit our command codes and order them to stand down.”

“Yes, sir.”

Valt hurried over to the Grand Admiral, close enough that their conversation would be difficult to overhear, “Sir, do you really think that will work?”

“No, but if this is the Empire in hiding then we must inform them of the situation. And if not, then you have prepared our backup plan. Correct, Captain?”

“Your shuttle is prepped and ready, sir.”

“Very well,” Thrawn walked to the holo-table, “Communications, have they responded?”

In response, a figure appeared on the table wearing what Thrawn could only call a poor imitation of an Imperial Fleet uniform. It was a shade too dark and the cut sloppy and too aggressive, like a child wearing their parent’s clothing. None of that was helped by the fact that the woman wearing the uniform likely hadn’t even been born when the Empire was founded.

“It is customary to address a Grand Admiral with a senior officer, not a cadet,” Thrawn said in a tone that drew a shiver from the Captain beside him. 

The woman seemed almost surprised for a split second as if she had not believed Thrawn's codes, before the standard-issue Imperial sneer Thrawn had confronted too many times marred her young face, “Grand Admiral Thrawn. We had received rumors that you survived. Is it true you were defeated by a child?”

Thrawn hoped this wasn’t how the conversation was going to continue, “Clearly you know who I am, but I am afraid I am at a loss to who you are. You appear to be out of uniform.”

“That uniform died with the Empire. It is the clothing of failures and has-beens. I wear the true mantle of Order in this galaxy.”

“And that would be...” Thrawn let the end of his sentence hang as bait.

She took it, “The New Order is dead. Pledge your allegiance to the First Order now and stand down. If you comply, I am willing to forgive your foolish attack on our vessels.”

“My vessels were acting under my lawful authority as Grand Admiral of the Galactic Empire. Your ships interfered in an ongoing military operation, resulting in the needless loss of lives and material. I issued a stand-down order to your two ships and they responded by opening fire upon the Seventh fleet in an act of willful sedition. I will give you the same opportunity: do not test my patience.”

Finally, the sneer cracked just a little; perhaps she had expected him to be cowed by her show of force and bragging about some new fanatical sect of the Navy. Her ships were still trying to untangle themselves from what Thrawn assumed had been her planned knockout punch. All the while, Thrawn’s own fleet had effectively moved to surround the unescorted destroyers. The destroyers hadn’t even launched fighters yet. It was most unimpressive.

“You’ve been away too long, old man,” the woman snarled at him, “And now you dare to give  _ me _ orders?”

“I honestly don’t even know who you are,” Thrawn countered, motioning to Valt to prepare his ships to attack. The interdiction field had forced them to exit hyperspace too far away from the turbolasers to be effective against capital ship shields, but Thrawn's lighter ships were quickly moving into flanking position while his destroyers moved to protect the  _ Revan _ .

She simply glared at him, “You shall address me as General. Now, surrender to the New Order-”

Valt murmured from behind him that the Seventh was in attack position and Thrawn nodded his acknowledgment without taking his eyes off the ‘General’. Her ships were struggling to clear their own firing lines, and he decided this conversation would provide no further merit. “I believe I have seen all I need to see,” he said, cutting the link. “Captain, have all ships open fire. Inform the landing party to finish their business and withdraw to the  _ Chimera _ directly. Inform Grey Squad that I need the asset now.”

The sound of the turbolaser engaging rumbled through the ship and Thrawn was disappointed to see it took the enemy almost thirty seconds to begin returning fire. “Sir, enemy ships are concentrating their fire on us,” came a voice from the command trench.

“Then the situation is well under control. At this range, their weapons cannot penetrate our shields. Continue to have the frigates and fighters pick apart their flanks. Whatever this First Order is, it appears they mistake quantity for tactics. An easy enough strategy to negate.”

“Grand Admiral, multiple landing craft are en-route to the surface from the enemy fleet. They are all heading to the surface.”

“Intercept them,” Valt interjected.

“It’s... it’s all their fighters, sir. Every destroyer has launched for the surface. They are ignoring us completely.”

“All of them?” Valt asked, the disbelief in his voice obvious. Starfighters could get close enough to large ships that a skilled pilot could bypass the shield and directly damage a ship like a Star Destroyer. The Rebels had used this tactic to destroy countless undefended destroyers during the war. Either they didn’t think Thrawn would exploit this obvious flaw or they were well aware of the child’s value. 

Thrawn dismissed the question as irrelevant, “It appears whatever is on the surface of that planet is of more value to this First Order than their own ships, assuming that girl is not simply acting out of spite.” Thrawn wasn’t sure that spite was not the sum total of her military skill. “If she is ready to concede her fighter screen to me, then I will not deny her invitation. Have our fighters target her command ship. Perhaps the rest of their captains will be more amenable than she was. Communications, inform Grey Squad that we will be unable to send reinforcements for the foreseeable future. Tell them about the incoming enemy forces and let the Sergeant know that if he cannot secure the child, he is to stop this First Order from retrieving it.”


	17. Made to be Left Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An Order Exterminated, The Endangered Protected

“...stop this First Order from retrieving it.”

“Understood,  _ Chimaera _ ,” Two said, turning to where Four was still tending to One. Burner stood guard over them both. 

“He’s unconscious,” Four said. “I have him sedated, but he needs a bacta tank.” 

“Well, that might take a while; apparently, there are more hostiles in orbit engaging the Seventh.” Two changed his channel to their general command, “Burner, we need to find that Mandalorian now.”

“He must be going for the last shuttle, sir,” Burner said, gesturing to the ship directly behind him — the ship surrounded by fifty clones. “It’s his only way off this planet.”

“That or he’s waiting for us to call in more ships in the hope he can take one of them.”

“With all due respect, sir, that’s not how I would play it. If I were in a situation like this, I’d realize we had pulled back, waiting for reinforcements. I’d be looking to make a move before they get down here.”

Four looked up, “And you expect him to fight through all these clones, Commander? He’s good, but no one’s that good.”

“He doesn’t need to be, ma’am. He knows we are after the kid. If I were him, I’d rig myself to explode and walk right in. Demand the shuttle.”

“Then it’s unfortunate that our orders have changed. Until the Old Man can secure us an evac, we either need to secure the kid or at least make sure whoever else is up there doesn’t get him.”

“Incoming, I have multiple-” the clone’s warning was cut short by the earsplitting scream of close-range TIE engines. 

“Everyone take cover, now!” Two shouted. They dove for cover as more of the white-painted TIEs flew overhead: bombers.

Luckily, many of the clones were already undercover and the shuttle was tucked safely beneath an outcropping. Hundreds of feet of solid rock protecting it from the falling bombs. Unfortunately, whoever was flying the bombers didn’t seem to care. Proton bombs fell in and around the canyon as if the formations overhead were more interested in dropping bombs than in actually doing any damage. The sound was deafening, and Two saw more than a few clones who were too close to the canyon’s exposed center vaporized in by the impacts. This mission was slowly chewing up the last survivors of the  _ Bulwark _ , and Two wondered how much longer the Old Man could keep pulling tricks out of his hat.

It wasn’t that he suspected the Old Man would ever run out of tricks; he just hoped to survive them. 

As the bombing ceased, he looked up. Their shuttle was somehow still in one piece, with Four and the commander with their clone escort still guarding the last ticket off this rock.

At least until whatever those bombers had been priming the ground for arrived.

But perhaps Two was about to be surprised here too. Instead of the howl of shuttles approaching, there was another sound—the loud hiss almost like more bombs or rockets but slower, more controlled. Whatever was falling this time was controlled, meant to land. It wasn’t more bombs. It was the second wave. Two refused to believe these half-rate stormtroopers could fly now, which meant...

“Clankers!” Another clone shouted as blue bolts began to surge up toward them, impacting the wall of metal closing on them. “More of those super-heavies coming in!” 

It was like his Gods had decided to take Two and thrust him back into the Clone Wars. Here he was, with a company of clones watching as what must be a hundred droids, he suspected representing the vast majority of Dark Troopers left in the galaxy, landed in a drop-attack. At least he hoped it was the vast majority of Dark Troopers left in the galaxy; they had never exactly been mass-produced, and it wasn’t as if anyone was making more of them.

Then again, it wasn’t as if anyone was making more clones either. Red and blue streaked around him in the canyon and part of Two felt there should be more fanfare to this than a dusty shootout on a planet whose name no one would remember. He was watching two endangered species destroy one another, all over what might be the last surviving member of yet another endangered species.

This time, however, the Dark Troopers were not so quickly taken down. The initial bombardment may not have done much damage, but it had at least provided some cover for their descent. This time, when the droids opened fire, they didn’t each have multiple blasters zeroed in on them. This time, the next generation droids were exacting a toll from his first-generation clone Troopers.

And of course, just as the chaos intensified, the damned Mandalorian had to make his move. A bolt landed amongst the clones guarding Four, those closest to the shuttle, and one of the guards went down. The others turned, firing at the armored fighter who had managed to sneak to within a few meters of their perimeter. Of course, turning their attention to him exposed them to the Dark Troopers, who showed no reluctance to fire at a target with their back turned.

There was only one way to stop the Mandalorian from strategically killing off the right clones to escape. 

“Burner,” Two barked. “Have your men focus on those droids. I’ll handle the Mandalorian.”

He began firing a blatant barrage of shots at the rocks behind the shuttle where the Mandalorian had been hiding, activating his jetpack for a single short burst to propel him to the spot. As he landed, Two exchanged his rifle for a blaster pistol. He suspected the Mandalorian would be fighting close, and if that were the case, a sniper-rifle would just get him killed.

Two would’ve thought the canyon would amplify the sounds of the battle behind him, but once he was inside the rocks where the Mandalorian was hiding, he realized that the jagged stone absorbed sound. The Second Clone War raged just a few meters away, but here in these narrow canyons, you’d think the planet was empty. As if this entire event came down to the single confrontation of the two men.

Two allowed himself a smile; part of him wanted to make this personal anyway. He wasn’t going to ignore this opportunity to pay the terrorist back for Pantora. 

He began moving through the narrow chasms that shot off the main canyon, searching for his prey. Two wasn’t expecting this to be easy; after all, the Mandalorian was a bounty hunter. Still, he hoped that meant the man was used to playing the other side of this game. His helmet scanner picked up on an obvious trap up ahead, some small thorny bush broken by someone moving past it. Two hoped this wasn’t the peak of the Mando’s skill as he unhooked a stun grenade and rolled it out toward the bush. He dived just before it exploded, looking for where the Mandalorian had laid his trap. The bolt that barely missed his head told him this bounty-hunter had not been fooled.

Cursing, Two dove back into the cover of the rocks. Had the Mando hit him, this would be over. But the Mando had missed, and one shot, one kill had become a frantic exchange of blaster bolts. Two returned fire, switching positions, but while he seemed to at best hit the general position of the Mandalorian, every one of the Mando’s shots was always on top of him. Two had to admit he was outmatched; he may be an elite soldier, but the Mandalorian was a warrior. Two was trained to fight as a unit, to win wars, to take objectives. In the end, the Mandalorian was trained to do one thing: kill. Two had a mission. The Mando had a target. 

As the stone beside his most recent fallback position exploded, Two hurled another grenade in the vague direction he hoped the blast had come from. His eyes scanned for any advantage, but all of them were either dead or further back in the canyon fighting. The Mandalorian didn’t let his dead ally slow him one bit. That wasn’t their way.

Alone out here, the best Two could do was hope that the clones won against the clankers. Hope that the Old Man won the fight in orbit and eventually sent reinforcements down. And, of course, hope that the Mando didn’t realize that this was all merely a distraction to play for time.

Another bolt ripped through the stone next to him, and Two grinned at the realization that his luck had held so far on that last one. Now all he had to do was wait and see if his luck would hold out on the rest. And if it didn’t? 

Well, he had a feeling at that point it wouldn’t be his problem.

Two fired back at nothing as more streaks of red whizzed past him. He turned to reposition, and the Mandalorian finally landed a hit on his back. He could smell the plastisteel of his armor charring from the impact, but not the sharp pain that would’ve indicated that the bolt had burned clean through his armor. He fired several shots back and finally made it back under cover before another shot landed. Just as well, it was unlikely his armor would survive a second hit.

The game of cat and mouse continued; Two trying to keep the Mandalorian from being able to fully commit to either cat or mouse. The moment that happened, he knew he would either finally kill Two or realize that if he tried just to walk away there was nothing Two could do to stop him. Every minute felt like an entire battle to Two -- the tense one-one-one becoming the longest, most intense campaign of his career.

But in the end, the Mandalorian was only a warrior. Two was a soldier.

“G2, this is Burner. It’s over.”

* * * * *

“Grand Admiral, the final destroyer has surrendered.”

The Grand Admiral allowed himself some satisfaction at this latest victory, even if such an unworthy opponent marred it. Still, it had come with some distinct advantages, in the form of ten more Star Destroyers for the Seventh fleet. Thrawn now had more ships under his command than he’d had at Lothal. Loyalty was below subservience for this First Order it seemed. Once the so-called General had been dealt with, the rest of the fleet had been eager to surrender. It seemed they retained at least one trait from the old Empire: they knew when to pick the winning side.

“Captain,” the Grand Admiral said, turning from the window. “Please send a detachment of our officers and troopers to each of the new ships. Include droids to override the command codes and send in splicers to begin downloading their data-banks. And have our newest Captains all report to the Chimaera. I wish to debrief them personally.”

Valt smiled, knowing what that meant. They may walk out of that debriefing still holding the rank of captain, but by the time they did, their ships would belong to Thrawn. Valt also made a note to himself to have the quartermaster prepare a new set of uniforms for everyone coming over. It wouldn’t do for officers of the Seventh to be wearing children’s play-clothes when meeting the Grand Admiral.

The Captain had almost made it off the bridge before the proximity alarm once more began blaring. Both he and Thrawn turned to the control trench, annoyance mixed with surprise in Valt’s eyes: only mild interest in Thrawn’s, “Sir, I have five more signatures coming out of hyperspace.”

“Five is hardly a concern at this point,” Thrawn remarked. “Have all ships disperse and standby for combat. Inform our new vessels to…”

“Grand Admiral, one of them is a star-dreadnought class…” came the voice from the trench. To the communications officer’s credit, his tone implied he might be informing Thrawn of when his dinner would be served.

Thrawn looked to Valt, the question obvious, and the Captain offered a reply, “The last  _ Executor _ -class ship was destroyed over Jakku… And the New Republic hasn’t commissioned anything that large.”

“Then I suppose we shall simply have to hold our anticipation for a moment,” Thrawn replied, turning back to the window. The Grand Admiral had never supported the monster vessels, but to hold the last remaining _Executor_ -class would provide him all the legitimacy he would ever need. Assuming he could ever find enough people to staff the thing.

The five ships jumped out of hyperspace a fair distance from the planet, but even at that range, the outline of the massive ship at their center made it obvious. This could pose a minor hindrance; the star-dreadnought could carry more fighters alone than Thrawn’s entire command, assuming it was full.

“Grand Admiral, I’m receiving the registry code from the new ship… It’s the  _ Eclipse, _ sir,” the communications station replied.

The _Eclipse_ — the Emperor’s personal command ship. It had been reported destroyed after Endor, but as he was discovering, much of what had been reported destroyed after Endor had merely been _lost_.

“We are receiving a communication from the  _ Eclipse, _ Grand Admiral.”

Thrawn turned and walked to the holo-table at the rear of the bridge, “Very well, put it through.”

This time, it was not a sneering child that Thrawn met, but a familiar face. Familiar, and a disappointment.

“Commandant Brendol Hux. I will admit that you are not the person I would have expected in command of a ship.”

The older man stared back at Thrawn as if surprised to be seeing the Chriss. Thrawn wondered if their ships even had hyperspace radios, given how surprised everyone sent to meet him seemed to be shocked to find that he was alive.

“Grand Admiral Thrawn,” the elderly schoolteacher said, as if to a new star pupil he had just stolen from a neighboring institution, “Now it makes sense why none of my ships responded to my hails and why the  _ Vengeance _ is a debris field.”

“I dearly hope that ‘General’ was not one of your pupils, Commandant. If so, then I would recommend you leave fleet command to the Admirals and return to the Academy. Quality has fallen to an inexcusable level.”

Anger briefly flared in the man’s eyes, but his ambition beat it down before it found his tongue, “Things have changed, Thrawn. The Empire is gone and-”

“Yes, yes, you are the First Order now. The last person to give me a speech about your radical little faction is… no longer with us. My question is, do you intend to follow her mistake, Commandant?”

“It’s actually General now, Grand Admiral,” came a reply with roughly the authority of a newly promoted lieutenant.

Thrawn yawned at this, “Then I still hold rank. Unless you’d like to make the same play as your protege?”

“Play, Thrawn?”

“Sedition. As you can see, I take a severe line on that particular crime.”

This finally got a response, “See here, Thrawn. Things have changed since you disappeared. There is a new Grand Admiral, and you will either submit to her or your career ends here.”

Thrawn gave Valt, standing across the table, a subtle glance. The Captain keyed a response and the message popped up on Thrawn’s display beside the hologram — _They are launching fighters_.

He typed in his own response,  _ Please prepare our farewell gift _ . Was he potentially wasting some time with the more lengthy response? Perhaps, but in his experience, prudent planning and clear communications won out every time. Also, the blabbering Hux was too dim to note the delay as anything but the same petulance it had been his job to remove from youths, not encourage.

Valt gave a sharp salute and turned around to prepare the pre-discussed backup plan. Thrawn, who had disguised the exchange as thinking over his options, looked back to the school-teacher turned general, “Then it seems my choice is obvious. I am prepared to come over to your vessel to discuss the integration of the Seventh in person.”

Hux’s visible relief almost made Thrawn want to take it back, “Very good, Grand Admiral. We will expect one shuttle and a single aide. I shall be waiting to greet you in the  _ Eclipse’s _ main hanger.” His voice had the unsteady joy of someone who thought they had just gotten away with something. Perhaps Hux had finally remembered who he had been threatening. If the ‘General’ had been so unsure of his ability to win this fight with his overwhelming firepower, perhaps Thrawn was throwing away a one-use weapon without need.

“It will be an auspicious reunion,” the Grand Admiral responded.

* * * * *

The bridge of the  _ Constitution _ was quiet for the moment. The Twi’lek non-comm manning the communications display fully expected it to stay that way. With the fleet still occupied with the humanitarian crisis at Domwei, there wasn’t anything to interrupt her quiet shift.

Then the console lit up with the one type of message she could not ignore. “Hey Jirth,” she called over the Mon-Cala officer of the deck. “You need to see this.”

“Yes, Irel?” the normally cherry officer said, strolling over holding a cup of some Mon-Cala drink she was sure was poisonous to most other species in one webbed hand, “What is it?”

“Just got a ping off a tracking beacon.”

That got everyone’s attention. Tracking beacons were the last-ditch emergency distress system for isolated units, and they required an immediate response  — no exceptions.

“Right, get me the hanger deck. How long will it take to get starfighters-”

The Twi’lek turned, “You should really see this. I think we might need to send a larger response team,” she said, moving over so he could see the full message just now coming through. The tracking beacons were usually a simple signal but more advanced units, normally provided to scouts or long-range patrols, could also send a basic sensor image. This one did.

“Sound general quarters,” Jirth told Irel. “And get the Admiral, he needs to see this.”

* * * * *

General Brendol Hux waited in the main hangar for Thrawn’s shuttle to arrive. The blasted alien had delayed almost a half-hour before coming over, demanding that protocol be correct before finally coming over. Hux looked to the stormtroopers lining the room. They were under orders to arrest Thrawn the moment he exited his ship. There was a minor risk his ships might take umbrage to that, but loyalty was due only to the First Order, and they would learn that lesson or be culled like the rest of the failures of the old Empire.

“General, Thrawn’s shuttle is arriving,” an aid said from behind him. Hux was pleased, but not surprised, to hear that none of his people were paying heed to the foolish ploy that Thrawn held any rank with them. Perhaps he could be of use to the First Order once he was properly convinced by the Supreme Leader, assuming he even made it back to command. After all, things were so unstable out here and mistakes sometimes happened.

He smirked at the thought, looking again to his stormtroopers surrounding the hall. He actually hoped the old fool would be stupid enough to resist; it would make his report so much cleaner.

“Very well, let’s get this over with,” he said, watching as Thrawn’s shuttle entered the hanger of the  _ Eclipse _ . The ship glided in to settle onto the floor of the hanger in front of them. Hux held his troopers back for a moment, waiting for the Chriss to exit first and perhaps give him the opportunity to surrender with grace. He owed the old man that at least.

“Sir… the life-signs in the shuttle just disappeared,” his aid said, looking at their sensor in confusion.

The shuttle’s ramp began to lower as Hux looked at the young officer, annoyance clear on his face, “What?”

“They just disappeared, sir,” the aid repeated as the ramp lowered. No one exited the shuttle.

Impatient, Hux motioned some troopers to move closer. As he did, a figure came down the ramp. But it wasn’t Thrawn, it was a droid.

Snarling, Hux walked up to the droid, drawing his sidearm. “Where is your master, droid?” 

The protocol droid turned to him with that befuddled way of their design, “General Brendol Hux: my master, Grand Admiral Thrawn, gives his sincere condolences that he was not able to deliver this in person, but-”

Hux shot the droid before it finished, motioning his troopers to storm the shuttle. He turned, taking out his transmitter, and signaled the bridge, “Bridge, this is Hux. Open fire on Thrawn’s ship-”

“Sir,” his aid interrupted. Hux turned to the younger man, about to order some nearby troopers to arrest him as well for interrupting before he noticed the man holding up something he had taken off the droid. Something that was blinking.

As the aid presented the object to him, Hux recognized it. His eyes went wide as a response from the bridge crackled over his comms, “Sir, the interdiction field around Thrawn’s fleet just went down. His ships appear to be moving to break orbit from the planet.”

The General just looked at the blinking light, mocking him with every photon it sent to his eyes. He wanted to crush it, but it was too late. Now he understood why Thrawn had delayed for almost a half-hour; he didn’t need any more ships. He had been creating havoc across the region for weeks: provoking the New Republic to send more and more ships here. By now, it would be the largest fleet they had assembled since Jakku--

“General, Bridge. We have multiple hyperspace signatures exiting behind us.”

Hux finally snapped out of the trance that damned transmitter had put him in, grabbing it from his stupefied aid and throwing it to the floor, and crushing it under his boot, “Nevermind Thrawn, get us out of here now!”

* * * * *

“All squadrons report ready now, Admiral,” Irel informed the Mon-Cala.

“Excellent work, Irel,” Fleet Admiral Grall Ackbar replied. The Admiral had transferred over to the  _ Constitution _ before they had jumped to hyperspace. Ackbar had thought they were done with super-ships after Jakku, but he was glad he had convinced the Senate not to disassemble the  _ Starhawks _ , just in case something like this happened. Pacifism worked wonders long as everyone played along, but the Empire had only been interested in one rule: theirs.

As the New Republic fleet exited hyperspace, Ackbar saw the largest Imperial fleet he had laid eyes on since Endor. There had to be almost twenty-five destroyers and perhaps twice that many smaller ships. And that wasn’t counting the super.

“We’re tracking the transponder now, Admiral. It’s the  _ Eclipse _ ,” Irel reported.  _ Palpatine’s ship. _

Ackbar had been there when it had been destroyed years ago. But in the end, the name was irrelevant. Only the old Empire had actually known how many command ships had been in service, and everyone had assumed they had been consigned to history at Jakku. Apparently, that assumption had been wrong. Luckily he had five  _ Starhawk _ battleships in his fleet. It was an unfair fight, but the Mon-Cal was more accomodating of unfair fights when he was on this side of them.

“Have tractor beams engage on the super. Don’t let it escape,” Ackbar said. Each  _ Starhawk _ had six massive tractor arrays that could stop any destroyer in its tracks. One ship’s beams would make hyperspace a near-suicide maneuver, but five ships all pulling from different directions would pull apart any ship that tried to jump out, even one as big as the ghost-ship on his screen. It wasn’t quite as elegant as the Empire’s old interdictor fields, but the end result was the same.

“Admiral, the enemy ships…” the officer, a younger man called Jirth, flagged the Admiral’s attention, “Their formation doesn’t make any sense. The super is on the edge of the destroyers, and most of the ships are close to the planet. And look, there’s wreckage here, sir. It looks like they’ve been shooting one another.”

He glanced at the report and noted the younger Mon-Cal was right. Nothing about this made sense. The Remnant wasn’t supposed to have this kind of firepower.

“It looks like most of the ships are trying to withdraw, sir.”

“Do we have the super?” Ackbar asked.

“Yes. All the ships closer to the planet look like they are preparing to jump to hyperspace, Admiral.”

That didn’t make sense. The Imperial Navy had never been known for its bravery under fire once the tables had turned, but with the  _ Starhawks  _ focused on the super the engagement was not as one-sided as it appeared.

“They’re withdrawing, sir. All but five ships are jumping away…”

“Concentrate firepower on the remaining escorts,” the Admiral said. He almost did not notice the datapad Jirth placed next to him. It held a sensor image of one of the destroyers as it had turned to exit, showing its underside. Painted across the entire expanse of its underbelly was the distinct image of a massive sea monster. Ackbar had not been in command of the then-Rebel fleet back when that ship had last been seen, but he had heard the stories. It seems that all kinds of ghosts were rearing their heads today. 

He watched as most of the Imperial ships jumped away, knowing that regardless of this outcome, he would have some very interesting communications with Chandrila after this battle. Now he just had to win it.

* * * * *

“It’s over.” 

Two breathed a sigh of relief before responding,“Understood, Burner. I’m heading back and need reinforcement.” He began to move back towards the clones.

“Roger that, sir, but be advised, I don’t have many men to spare. The Grand Admiral just forced the surrender of… whoever is in orbit as they were about to land. We got a couple of thousand prisoners now.”

Two left unsaid the question of how many clones were left. The answer was too few. It had been too few for too long. Instead, he focused on getting back to friendly forces without getting killed.

A few minutes later, Two emerged back into the canyon proper. The ground was now littered with the black, twisted bodies of the Dark Troopers, but with enough of a scattering of white armor to make it obvious to Two that the clones had paid for the victory.

Which made the sea of white armored bodies confusing for a moment, before he realized that most of them wore that formless armor of this ‘First Order.’ It looked like Burner had been right, their transports had just been landing when the Old Man had won whatever was going on in orbit, and they had all surrendered. At least until they learned that they outnumbered Two and his remaining clones by what looked like about a thousand to one.

Two looked around for Burner, and when he was unable to find the clone opened his helmet comm, “Burner, G2. We need to get those shuttles out of here. They are begging for the target to grab one.”

The response was so quick Two would have thought the clone had just been sitting around bored, waiting for him to call, “You’re going to have to contact the Grand Admiral, sir. He ordered us to secure the area and have you contact him as soon as you got back.”

“What about-” Two stopped himself. If Burner was handing command over to him, that told him everything he needed to know about the commander’s state. “Understood.”

He switched his channel to speak to orbit, “ _ Chimaera, _ G2. Situation on the surface unchanged. Target is still at large, requesting reinforcements and that you exfil the prisoners.”

There was a brief pause before a voice, Thrawn’s adjutant Captain Valt, came on the channel, “Sergeant, you need to stay off the line. The situation in orbit has evolved. We can’t send any reinforcements, do whatever it takes to complete your mission. Out.”

That was, to understate it, not the response Two had hoped for. He switched back to Burner, “Alright, today’s gonna be a long one. We gotta hang on a bit longer down here, orders are the same. Have every shuttle still here fly a couple hundred clicks south and land. Low altitude, let them know anything that gets above five hundred feet gets shot down.”

There was a brief pause, “Understood, and the fighters?”

“Hundred clicks north. Just get everything away from here, and get any of the wannabe troopers out of the damn canyon.”

This time the pause was slightly longer, “Without transports, sir?”

“Let them march out. I need this damn canyon clear and your troopers available before the Mando figures out how exposed we are!” Having said this, Two switches his comm to their squad channel, “Four, status?”

“We clear to evac?”

Two thought this was an interesting definition of status, but medics always were a bit independent. Being the people who stitched you back together allowed you some leeway, “No, things in orbit keep getting worse.”

“That’s the status of the commander too. He needs a bacta tank now,” Four replied.

Two began walking over to the shuttle, concerned that only a single squad of clones remained to guard the parked shuttle, “Not an option right now. Stay in the shuttle. I’m going to clear out all the prisoners and then find the Mandalorian.”

“The commander’s going to die if we stay.”

“He might die for nothing if we leave,” Two responded with more bite than he intended, “And there’s no guarantee you’d even make it back to the ship.”

“Why is the Mando worth it to you?” Came the response over their private channel as Two finally began walking up the shuttle’s ramp to face her, “Five and Three are already dead. Let’s just pull out now-”

He grabbed her as he got close enough. The clones still guarding the ship moved to both try to give them space while still trying to keep either from getting shot by the Mandalorian. “One more word, Four, and I don’t care if you are the only thing keeping the commander alive, I will shoot you myself. We have orders, we follow them. Too complicated for you?”

Despite its warlike reputation, Pantora had never really subscribed to the ‘rule by fear’ motif that was so popular with many of the old Empire. Two had never subscribed to it either, and he wasn’t subscribing to it right now. They were soldiers; soldiers lived by discipline. If that broke down, nothing separated them from the warlords and pirates. If Four needed a not-so-gentle reminder that sometimes the people you liked had to die in war, then Two was happy to give it to her. He couldn’t see her face through the helmets, but the tremor in her voice told him all he needed to know, “N-No sir.”

No response was needed to that; he just turned and nodded to the squad of clones coming to reinforce the guard at the shuttle. He could already see the dejected line of stormtroopers beginning the march out of the canyon, and the roar of ships overhead had died down as the vessels peeled away. For a brief moment, he wondered what the Mandalorian thought of all this, from whatever vantage point he was spying on them from.

A new ping came through his comm from orbit: Valt, “Sergeant, the situation has changed again. You and your men will need to hold tight for a bit, probably a day, until we can return to extract you.”

“Sir, we have a number of badly wounded down here. Medic thinks some of them can’t wait a day for evac.”

There was a pause for about a minute. When Valt finally replied, it was with that reluctance that told Two the Old Man had intervened, “Understood. Sergeant. Evac the wounded, you have a ten-minute window starting now.” 

He knew it was the Old Man because while Valt was a good officer, he was an officer in the Imperial Navy. If a lieutenant died on a mission, well, that just happened. The Old Man had a more nuanced view of his people.

“Understood, Sir. G2 out,” He switched to the general channel for the clones and Four, “Alright people, we have ten minutes to evac wounded. Shuttle up in five, move it!”

A chorus of sounds filled the air as the clones moved their wounded to the shuttle, and the pilot prepared for takeoff. Four walked over a few minutes later as the preparations were finishing, “We’ve finished triage. Ready to load the wounded now, sir.”

“You’re staying?” Two asked, a little surprised.

She shrugged, “Still have a squad down here. The  _ Chimaera _ has competent med techs, not so sure about these clones.”

He turned from the medic, letting it slide. He was about to call Burner to re-establish the search when a bolt took out one of the two clones still guarding the shuttle. In their haste to ready the wounded, they’d had to pull clones from the perimeter, and with the shuttle about to take off there were only a handful of clones around it. Now there was one less.

“On that ledge, fire, fire!” The shout came from one of the clones, but it was already too late. The shuttle had moved further away from the outcropping for loading and takeoff, and the Mandalorian had been able to sneak almost directly above it on some overhang. Two had no idea how he could have gotten up there with the kid without using his jetpack or being seen.

That didn’t matter now. What did was that now he was closer to the shuttle than most of the clones. A shuttle with only a pilot and a few clones on board. The last guard standing outside was dead before the Mandalorian hit the ground.

“Power down now!” Two screamed. If the Mandalorian took the ship now, he could effectively escape and they would never find him. It would be child’s play for him to find some of the other ships and escape. All he needed was one ship with a hyperdrive and to lay low until the Old Man left.

“He can’t be trying to steal the medical evacuation?” Four said in disbelief.

“That’s exactly his plan. He saw what we are doing, he knows that if we are evacing the wounded it’s because we were going to be without support. Probably guessed that meant he could slip by from us. He had to see those other ships, or might not know the shuttles don’t have hyperdrives. Either way, we can’t let him escape.” Two responded, switching to the clone’s channel. “Burner, he does not take that shuttle. Do whatever you have to.”

“Sir, the wounded are in the line of fire.”

Not for the Mandalorian. The sound of a blaster and a burst of red light from the shuttle told Two all he needed to know about the fate of the pilot as the rear door raised up. The shuttles were designed for combat drops and fast extractions; there was no slow rising for anyone to exploit, even if there had been anyone close enough to do it. A moment later, the engine began powering up.

“Take it down, now!” Two shouted. Without any other options several clones began firing into the shuttle. Others were running through the fire to try to save their wounded brothers. Four was right there, grabbing the commander and dragging him away from the shuttle.

A team of clones were moving with a heavy repeating blaster, something the First Order must have brought down, and wheeled the large cannon towards the shuttle. As it began to rise from the canyon floor a few bolts from the weapon glanced off the hull plating. Apparently the First Order was too cheap to buy E-Webs, this was some lower-power knockoff. 

“Switch to the ledge above!” The order from Burner came over the comms. True to their reputation, all the clones turned their weapons from the shuttle to the rock outcropping above it where the Mandalorian had been waiting. Their weapons, which had been so ineffective against the armored ship, had a predictable effect on the rocks.

The rocks had an equally predictable effect on the shuttle. In a few moments, the ship went from lifting off the ground to being buried under what must have been a hundred tons of rock. Armored or no, the shuttle wasn’t designed to take that kind of pressure. The Mandalorian would be crushed, or at best, trapped in the shuttle until he suffocated.

“Do you want us to dig him out, sir?” Burner said, walking up behind him.

“No,” Two replied, finally able to safely turn away from the Mandalorian, “There’s nothing in there we need anymore. Tend to the wounded and get into cover. We wait until the Old Man makes it back.”

* * * * *

A day turned into two, and nearly three before the large lambda shuttle finally returned, its white hull a welcome sight to Two and the few remaining clones. They had landed with just under sixty clones. There were forty-nine left. Those casualties, given what had been thrown at them, didn’t sound bad, but that was forty-nine survivors out of an entire company of almost five-hundred. There was a reason the Old Man had authorized the evacuation: they didn’t have the manpower to replace those kinds of losses.

The shuttle landed in the middle of the canyon, next to the charred hulks of the two Mandalorian ships and the empty, potted hulls of the defunct transports of the First Order’s first attack. As the ramps lowered, fresh stormtroopers and medics, all in the familiar armor of the Empire Two remembered, rushed out. For too many of the wounded that had needed evacuation, they were too late. That included the commander.

Two walked up to the commander of the landing party as Burner provided the officer the current status of the survivors. He waved his men to secure a perimeter as clones began climbing into the shuttle, working with the medics to move their wounded. Neither Two nor Four moved to the body bag containing the commander in a pile with the other casualties. By long-standing Imperial tradition, victorious soldiers did not carry their dead back. The Empire did not mix the weak with the strong.

Approaching the shuttle, Four privately commed Two, “Shuttle’s not going to fit everyone. Want me to find room?”

Two looked up the ramp, already knowing clones had filled the ship. Burner and the two survivors of Grey Squad had been delayed by giving the trooper commander the situation update. “No, we can wait for the next bus back up. They deserve to get off this rock.”

“They are clones, sir,” she responded, “They're made to be left behind.”

Two turned to her, again annoyed that their helmets hid his expression, “No, Four, they’re part of the Seventh.” He paused for a moment looking at their motley crew of Clone Wars relics, pre-Yavan fleet officers, and post-Jakku Remenants. He noted that while the Empire may be dead, it was far from gone. “None of us get left behind until the Old Man says so.” 

* * * * *

Hours later, everyone had extracted and silence had returned to the canyon. There had not been the time or the desire in the Seventh to clean up the droids or ruined ships, so they remained as the only marker of this battle. This included the pile of rocks entombing the Mandalorian and the child that had been the cause of all this destruction.

As the wind howled down the canyon, heralding some distant storm, the rocks shifted. A moment later, they shifted again, and then the rocks exploded outwards. 

Two had been right. The shuttle had been crushed, but not the small child who was the real cause of this battle. The exhausted little alien collapsed, a warm light fading around him as the perfect sphere he had created around himself was finally exposed to the fresh air. He crawled into the lap of the armored figure that had fallen unconscious protecting him. A final shield against the outside dangers, his last guardian from a cruel universe that saw him as a commodity. As the wind howled down the canyon and the child fell into exhaustion, the silver-armored figure stirred.


End file.
